Archive for Daily Inspiration

Feb
20

Step-By-Step – Build Your Dream

by nick

Your dream may seem out of reach or you may just not know where to start. List the steps you think you need to achieve to start your new business. Then rank them with which one needs to be done first. Take one step at a time and day by day you will achieve your dream. Remember, you may need to “pivot” or make a change in direction or slight modification of your concept. Great!  Get out and talk to your potential customers and learn what they really want. Then figure out how to deliver a great product or service. You can do it. Just take one step at a time.

 

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Feb
19

Crazy enough to change the world

by nick
 New Post on Steve Blank – Posted on February 19, 2013

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.“

Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement speech, 2005

Last week one of our mentors abruptly resigned from coaching one of the Lean LaunchPad student teams after claiming the students were ignoring his practical advice and years of expertise in the field.

His reaction reminded me one more time why entrepreneurship is an art, why VC’s manage portfolios of companies and why new ideas come from those who don’t respect the status quo.

I’m a Domain Expert Damn It
We always assign experienced mentors to our student teams. In this class this seemed like a perfect fit – a driven (irrational?) founder paired with a mentor who had two operating companies in this space, who had developed and sold vertical market software to companies in this space, and had studied the field as an academic specialty. A match made in heaven?  Not exactly.

The mentor tried his best to get the team to look at the actual operating data that exists for this kind of service and the likely regulatory hurdles they will find. He was very negative about the concept and strongly suggested the team do a pivot, but the founder was very determined to make a go of his concept.

He finally quit in frustration.

And here’s the conundrum – given a wise mentor (or VC) with years of experience telling you it’s a bad idea – what should you as the founder do?

Are You Crazy Enough?
What we suggest to teams in the classroom is the same as I suggest to teams in real world startups – after customers and experienced people are telling you it won’t work –

  1. Are you passionate enough to still believe?
  2. Can you explain after why getting out of the building and hearing all the negative news you still want to persevere?
  3. Will it change the world enough to make it worth the trials, travails and pain in getting there?

If so, ignore the other voices. The world moves forward on those who are dissidents. Because without dissent there is no creativity. A healthy disrespect for the status quo coupled with passion, persistence and agility trumps everything else.

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Jun
29

Is the American Dream Dead? Not if we have something to say about it!

by nick

Is the American Dream Dead?  Huffington Post

Innovation has provided the foundation for the growth of the U.S. economy since the beginning of the last century. It is what has pushed America ahead in retail, technology, medicine, and a host of other fields.

These innovations led to new products and services that have afforded the American people one of the highest standards of living in the world. Manufacturing provided jobs for factory workers, skilled labor, technicians, engineers, executives, service support businesses and material vendors.

Innovations and business startups created new industries, new products, services and millions of new jobs, fueling the belief in the American Dream and the middle class. Until recently, this creative and economic engine has kept the U.S. far ahead of the rest of the world and provided a wonderful life for most of the American people. It also insured that our college graduates had many opportunities to pursue their careers and dreams. However, over the last several years we have seen a decline in the American standard of living, and a loss of the economic power of the United States.

In the November 1, 2010 issue of Time Magazine, Fareed Zakaria writes in an article titled: “Restoring The American Dream” of the growing spirit and enthusiasm in many other parts of the world and the growing despair in America. Reflecting on a Newsweek poll in September, 2010,

63% of Americans said they did not think they would be able to maintain their current standard of living. Perhaps most troubling, Americans are strikingly fatalistic about their prospects. The can-do country is convinced that it can’t.

 

Our young people and college grads need the inspiration and a renewed hope that they too have a chance that at the grass roots level, each has the opportunity to create a better life, to dream, and the possibility to create their financial freedom. Let’s give them a chance! Let’s create some positive energy and excitement around innovation and finding the next new thing that will drive our economy forward.

Many in the press promote the value of the companies that grow to over a billion dollars in revenue as the real job creators. Thus many initiatives and government programs promote the high-growth businesses. However, the distinction between the startups that become billion-dollar business after 20 years is not evident at the birth of these businesses. The real economic and social impact comes from startups in all sectors, from all groups of people, not just from the high-growth ventures that get all the attention from angel investors, VCs and government programs.

An American Economic Renaissance

This country needs a common cause to unite behind to create an American economic renaissance. The key is providing support for a vast number of startups, implementing laws and new social norms that provide the infrastructure to nurture these businesses and help them grow. If anyone knew which companies would become the billion dollar winners, then we would all be investing in the sure winners. We do not know. We need to inspire and assist in the growth of a great number of companies. Most of these may not turn into the billion dollar winners that most investors are looking for, but they may be the successful small businesses that are the backbone of this country and the American Dream.

Restoring Manufacturing in America

To lead in innovation and to capitalize on the innovative potential of industry also requires a renewed collaboration between business and the government to restore manufacturing in America. With more and more manufacturing companies going offshore, many of the jobs for the American factory workers, the managers, technicians, engineers, executives, the supporting services and many outside vendors and their employees have been lost.

The manufacturing firms of America, with their vast array of engineers, technicians, and supporting service providers, created most of the new jobs for college graduates. If manufacturing continues to go offshore, what is left for the U.S. workforce and what positions will be available for our college graduates?

What Will It Take?

So what will it take to get the political parties on each side of the isle to work together for innovative legislation that benefits all Americans? Here are five ideas to help create jobs and boost the economy for the political parties to put into their convention planks.

1. Create a major tax credit incentive for the investors, including family and friends, who fund all types of startups. The companies should create at least one new job and the tax credit taken over 3 to 5 years and offset by monies received from the companies invested in.

2. Offer corporations the opportunity to bring back off-shore profits at a no tax or a low tax, with the provision that 1/3 is invested in startups and small businesses with less than 50 people and 1/3 is invested in tooling, plant and equipment to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

3. Offer moratoriums on student loans for those working to create a new business. For each dollar invested in the business, the government would offset the same amount of student loan indebtedness.

4. Offer loans to small business with approvals granted by the local SCORE and SBDC boards, not banks, to small businesses with less than 50 employees that complete their courses and that are counseled by their groups. The loans would be funded through the SBA and administered through local banks.

5. Offer educational programs for business startups in Spanish for the growing Latino population interested in creating their own businesses.

Let your voice be heard!
Now let’s here from you, the most innovative people on the planet. What would you suggest to revive the American Dream and create an American economic renaissance?

Give a voice to the needs of startups and small businesses. Get involved and let your voice be heard. Let your representatives know that we want more support for startups and small businesses. Email me your ideas, post your comments and sign a petition to your representative on LaunchAmerica.org.

For all you college graduates, take your destiny in your own hands, pursue your dreams and give a voice to your passion.

Nick Bassill
Launch America! Reviving the American Dream
nickbassill@launchamerica.org

 

Follow Nick Bassill on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LaunchAmerica

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Jun
4

Finally the light bulb gets lit!

by nick

Finally the light bulb gets lit!  Small businesses are the backbone of this country and deserve more education, mentors and funding.

Small businesses do not “speak” or understand the language and principles of high-growth startups and without the glamor and high-growth potential, get little attention. LaunchAmerica.com is preparing an online education and mentoring program to help create more successful small business startups. We are looking for contributors to help prepare content and assist with classes and would appreciate to hear from all those interested in helping more Americans fulfill their American Dream. Please contact us.

To provide support for the importance of small businesses and the need for more funding for all types of startups, my new book, Launch America! Reviving the American Dream, presents the Launch America Initiative to championing legislation for a major tax credit incentive program for the investors that fund all types of startups, not just the high-growth startups that get all the media, angel and VC attention.

22 states have tax credit programs for high-growth startups, but few programs for the hundreds of thousands of small businesses started by the men and women across America every year. Family and friends fund over three times as much money into small businesses as angel investors, but get little support or tax credits. It is time to change this and fuel the growth of all types of small businesses. Join us at launchamerica.org.

Steve Blank’s latest post from Jerry Engel on the 99% finally puts the spotlight on all the men and women working their butts off to fulfill their dreams.  Read the full post below.

Entrepreneurship for the 99%

Posted on June 4, 2012 by steveblank

This is a guest post from Jerry Engel, the Faculty Director of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (and the Founding Faculty Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley.)

———–

The 99%
As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Berkeley. This is a 3-day program for entrepreneurship faculty from around the world how to teach entrepreneurship via the Lean LaunchPad approach (business model canvas + customer development) and bring their entrepreneurship curriculums into the 21st century. Over the past couple of years this Lean LaunchPad model has proven immensely effective at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and, of course, the National Science Foundations Innovation-Corps program. The data from the classes seem to indicate that we’ve found have a method how to make scalable startups fail less.

While we’re excited by the results, we’ve realized that we’ve been solving the problem for the 1% of new ventures that are technology startups. The reality is that the United States is still a nation of small businesses. 99.7% of the ~6 million companies in the U.S. have less than 500 people and they employ 50% of the 121 million workers getting a paycheck. They accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8 million) of the 15 million net new jobs created between 1993 and 2009. And while they increasingly use technology as a platform and/or a way of reaching and managing customers, most are in non-tech businesses (construction, retail, health care, lodging, food services, etc.)

While we were figuring out how to be incredibly more efficient in building new technology startups, three out out of 10 new small businesses will fail in 2 years, half fail within 5 years.  The tools and techniques available to small businesses on Main Street are the same ones that were being used for the last 75 years.

Therefore, our remaining challenges are how to make them fail less – and how can we make the Lean LaunchPad approach relevant to the rest of the 99% of startups.

Serendipity
A serendipitous answer came to us around noon. His name is Alex Lawrence. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship. Alex is a successful serial entrepreneur –with the same drive and energy of many we have known here in Silicon Valley, but different. His nine startups have ranged from franchised fruit juice shops to Lendio a financial services company for small businesses. Alex had been recruited back by his Alma Matter to create an entrepreneurship program. In fact he had just been charged with creating an entrepreneurship minor – five or six courses for students of any major at the University that would help prepare them for the challenge of starting their own businesses.

Alex’s first insight was that the traditional “how to write a business plan” was as obsolete for Main Street as it is for Silicon Valley. So he had adopted Steve’s Lean LaunchPad class and was using The Startup Owner’s Manual as his core text. He had contacted us seeking advice on developing his curriculum, and it just seemed natural to invite him out to the ranch for a deeper dive.

As we dug into learning about Alex’s teaching experience we naturally asked him about the ventures his own students were creating. It was clear Alex was a bit apologetic; photo studios, online retail subscriptions to commodity household and personal hygiene products, etc. Alex explained that in his community building a successful venture that generated nice cash flows – not IPO’s – were the big win. To his students these were not “small businesses”, but ‘their businesses’, their livelihoods and their opportunities to create wealth and independence for themselves and their families.

Mismatch for Main Street

As we walked out to the pond, Alex explained that while he found the teachings of the Lean LaunchPad directly applicable and effective, there was a mismatch for his students in the size of the end goal (a great living versus a billion dollar IPO) and the details of the implementation of the business model (franchise and multilevel marketing versus direct sales, profit sharing versus equity for all, family and SBA loans versus venture capital, etc.)

Sitting by the pond we had a second epiphany: we could easily adjust the Lean LaunchPad class to bring 21st century entrepreneurship techniques to ‘Main Street’. To do this we needed to do is change the end goals and implementation details to match the aspirations and realities that these new small businesses face.

We called this Mainstream Entrepreneurship.

Mainstream Entrepreneurship
Mainstream Entrepreneurship recognizes that with the Lean LaunchPad class we now have a methodology of making small businesses fail less.  That accelerating business model search and discovery and using guided customer engagement as a learning process, we could help founders of mainstream businesses just like those starting technology ventures.

For the rest of the afternoon, Steve and I brainstormed with Alex about how he could take his 20 years of entrepreneurial small business experience and use the Business Model Canvas and Customer Development to create a university entrepreneurship curriculum and vocabulary for the mainstream of American Business.

We think we got it figured out.

Alex Lawrence will be one of the presenters at the Lean LaunchPad Educators Program August 22-24th in Berkeley.

Lessons Learned

  • Small businesses make up 99.7% of U.S. companies
  • “How to write a business plan” is as obsolete for Main Street as it is for Silicon Valley
  • Using the Lean LaunchPad (the business model canvas and Customer Development) are the right tools
  • Small businesses have different end goals and implementation details
  • We can adapt/modify the Lean LaunchPad approach to embrace these goals/details

 

 

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May
18

The Emotional Roller Coaster of Pitching

by nick

It is easy to get excited, nervous and then frustrated when making your pitch.  You prepare, meet an interesting prospect, give your pitch and no one seems interested.  Worse, they may say they are just not interested or give you some other negative feedback.

Take that information and use it as feedback. What can you learn from their comments? Can you change your service, product or marketing strategy to be more effective? The more you get out and talk to potential clients, customers and investors, the better your concept and business will become. As an entrepreneur, this is your journey.  So take each step with enthusiasm, be inspired, talk to yourself in the mirror and say each time, “I am a winner! I am successful in all I do! I am going to make this happen! Today is another day to present the great service I am offering!” Give it your all each time you make a pitch or presentation, and then release any energy on that pitch. High Involvement – Low Attachment. And remember – Ask Spririt – This or something better for the highest good of all concerned.

You never know what’s just around the corner and what that next pitch will bring. Spirit may have a much greater opportunity planned for you! So keep smiling, stay positive, and enjoy the journey and each Pitch!

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May
14

Steve Blank’s 9 Deadliest Start-up Sins

by nick

According to Steve Blank, whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

1. Assuming you know what the customer wants

First and deadliest of all is a founder’s unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them. Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model. On Day One, a start-up is a faith-based initiative built on guesses. 

To succeed, founders need to turn these guesses into facts as soon as possible by getting out of the building, asking customers if the hypotheses are correct, and quickly changing those that are wrong.

2. The “I know what features to build” flaw

The second flawed assumption is implicitly driven by the first. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Yet without direct and continuous customer contact, it’s unknown whether the features will hold any appeal to customers.

3. Focusing on the launch date

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Marketing tries to pick an “event” (trade show, conference, blog, etc.) where they can “launch” the product. Executives look at that date and the calendar, working backward to ignite fireworks on the day the product is launched. Neither management nor investors tolerate “wrong turns” that result in delays.

The product launch and first customer ship dates are merely the dates when a product development team thinks the product’s first release is “finished.” It doesn’t mean the company understands its customers or how to market or sell to them, yet in almost every start-up, ready or not, departmental clocks are set irrevocably to “first customer ship.” Even worse, a start-up’s investors are managing their financial expectations by this date as well.

4. Emphasizing execution instead of testing, learning, and iteration

Established companies execute business models where customers, problems, and necessary product features are all knowns; start-ups, on the other hand, need to operate in a “search” mode as they test and prove every one of their initial hypotheses.

They learn from the results of each test, refine the hypothesis, and test again—all in search of a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model. In practice, start-ups begin with a set of initial guesses, most of which will end up being wrong. Therefore, focusing on execution and delivering a product or service based on those initial, untested hypotheses is a going-out-of-business strategy.

5. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error

Traditional business plans and product development models have one great advantage: They provide boards and founders an unambiguous path with clearly defined milestones the board presumes will be achieved. Financial progress is tracked using metrics like income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The problem is, none of these metrics are very useful because they don’t track progress against your start-up’s only goal: to find a repeatable and scalable business model.  

6. Confusing traditional job titles with a startup’s needs

Most startups simply borrow job titles from established companies. But remember, these are jobs in an organization that’s executing a known business model. The term “Sales” at an existing company refers to a team that repeatedly sells a known product to a well-understood group of customers with standard presentations, prices, terms, and conditions. Start-ups by definition have few, if any, of these. In fact, they’re out searching for them!

The demands of customer discovery require people who are comfortable with change, chaos, and learning from failure and are at ease working in risky, unstable situations without a roadmap. 

7. Executing on a sales and marketing plan

Hiring VPs and execs with the right titles but the wrong skills leads to further trouble as high-powered sales and marketing people arrive on the payroll to execute the “plan.” Executives and board members accustomed to measurable signs of progress will focus on these execution activities because this is what they know how to do (and what they believe they were hired to do). Of course, in established companies with known customers and markets, this focus makes sense.

And even in some start-ups in “existing markets,” where customers and markets are known, it might work. But in a majority of startups, measuring progress against a product launch or revenue plan is simply false progress, since it transpires in a vacuum absent real customer feedback and rife with assumptions that might be wrong.

8. Prematurely scaling your company based on a presumption of success

The business plan, its revenue forecast, and the product introduction model assume that every step a start-up takes proceeds flawlessly and smoothly to the next.

The model leaves little room for error, learning, iteration, or customer feedback.

Even the most experienced executives are pressured to hire and staff per the plan regardless of progress. This leads to the next startup disaster: premature scaling. 

9. Management by crisis, which leads to a death spiral

The consequences of most start-up mistakes begin to show by the time of first customer ship, when sales aren’t happening according to “the plan.” Shortly thereafter, the sales VP is probably terminated as part of the “solution.”

A new sales VP is hired and quickly concludes that the company just didn’t understand its customers or how to sell them. Since the new sales VP was hired to “fix” sales, the marketing department must now respond to a sales manager who believes that whatever was created earlier in the company was wrong. (After all, it got the old VP fired, right?)

Here’s the real problem: No business plan survives first contact with customers. The assumptions in a business plan are simply a series of untested  hypotheses. When real results come in, the smart startups pivot or change their business model based on the results. It’s not a crisis, it’s part of the road to success.

steveblank | May 14, 2012 at 6:00 am | Categories: Customer Development | URL:http://wp.me/prGQZ-2Zs
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May
5

NRA Show Starts Today! See All The Startups!

by nick

More restaurants startup every year and it is one of the primary businesses that Americans start across the country in pursuit of their American Dream.  The NRA show, with classes and educational programs, offers exhibits and learning opportunities for all the would be restauranteurs and all those with a new idea that call sell into the Foodservice Industry.

NRA Show – Chicago McCormick Place, May 5 – May 8th.

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Mar
27

Empowering Startups

by nick

Launch America empowers men and women at the grass roots level and  helps build cooperative teams to expand the individual’s creative potential.  Launch America utilizes the expertise and experience of people of all ages to work with young people and the men and women who have a dream of creating their own successful startup. Launch America gives college graduates and young people the belief that they too have many opportunities to live the American Dream. This new way of forming and building businesses, with people helping each other, will give birth to an economic resurgence.

Together: We Can, I Can, You Can!™

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Feb
14

Social Media Success Stories

by nick

Social Media Success Stories Part 1

February 14th, 2012 :: , posted on Network Solutions Small Business Series.

I’m a firm believer in benchmarking to learn new skills and to tweak my knowledge base.  Studying what other successful marketers have done well, and avoiding others’ mistakes, is an efficient way to gain a competitive edge.  Here are eight social media small business success stories, broken into two articles, to inspire and to teach:

Success Story 1:  Take a quick visit to The Prospecting Expert’s social media sites, and you will find our first example of social media success.  The Prospecting Expert, founded by Steve Kloyda, is a B2B consulting firm to help sales professionals refine their prospecting skills.  Here are the tactics in Kloyda’s bag of social media marketing tricks:

  • Kloyda has made impressive use of video and podcasts to expand his social reach and convey information in an clear and interesting way.  Does your content translate to these media?
  • His social media channels share consistent branding, though use of Kloyda’s photo and logo across all platforms.  Clean up your own image by checking your platforms for consistency.
  • Kloyda’s content is mobile through the offering of an iPhone app directly on his site.  While custom apps may be expensive, they offer considerable value for on-the-go customers.

Success Story 2:  Click on over to Coconut Bliss, an organic dessert company whose products became well known through social media marketing.  Here is what Coconut Bliss does to make everyone scream for their ice cream:

  • The company shares fun experiences of customers eating their ice cream to show the brand’s friendly personality and delicious products.  Does anyone on your staff know how to take great photos?  Invest in a camera, and share photos across all your social media platforms.
  • Coconut Bliss gets fans engaged by running promotions and contests exclusively on social media.  Consider launching your own contest to grow and excite your fan base.

Success Story 3:  JamaicansMusic is an online music channel and quite the social media success story.  Using their social media savvy, the company grew their fans to 1.5 million in only four months!  Here’s what they do best:

  • JamaicansMusic keeps fans coming back for more by offering contests, free music and games to encourage Facebook fans to revisit their page and share it with friends.  What can you do to encourage repeat visits to your own page?
  • Visitors to JamaicansMusic’s website know instantly that the company is social because there are three opportunities – right on the home page – to connect socially.  Are you sending enough social signals and providing plenty of opportunities to connect?

Success Story 4:  You don’t have to be a large company, or even one with multiple employees, to be a social media success. Ana White, a self-described “homemaker” who is really a carpenter, runs a website that empowers women to take on carpentry projects.  White has over 51,000 Facebook fans who enjoy her DIY furniture projects.  Here are her smart and simple tactics:

  • White publishes free how-to guides for building furniture, and she asks fans to post pictures of their finished pieces.  Fans enjoy sharing with each other, and White understands that this sharing provides great user-generated content.  How can you get your own community involved in the content creation process?
  • White has created a community and tended to it without overshadowing it.  She comments on roughly half of her fans’ posts, and she doesn’t post all that often.  However, her fans constantly post and answer questions for each other because the community has been set up for real communication.  What can you do to take your own Facebook communications from one-way to a place of real community?
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Dec
8

What’s FAIR?

by nick

President Obama has brought forward the idea of Fairness. Being fair to all, giving all a fair shot, playing fair, fighting fair – but what is fairness? How is is applied across such a wide spectrum of people and business. What makes it meaningful and what will make it work?

FAIR to me means: For All Individuals Respect. Giving Respect to another at work, on the street, or at home. Respecting the individual and his right to different views, respecting the dignity of the ‘humanness’ of us all.  It is easy to see what is Fair, just ask: “Does this respect All Individuals?  As the administration moves forward and proposes what it considers Fair policies, and as all other parties ring in with their independent views, let us ask: does this respect the individual? When we interact, communicate or have dealings with another, are we showing respect? Is this Fair?

Nick Bassill, Founder, Launch America

 

 

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