The 5 persons every entrepreneur should know

When the last time you checked who’s in your corner?

Top 5 lists are the buzz these days. There are 5 ways to lose your dreaded love handles. 5 ways to make your baby happy. And my favourite, the 5 things to do to become a better manager. Just when you thought that the list was a killjoy here comes another list, this one from the guru of self help, media mogul Oprah Winfrey, whose web site published an article entitled: “Five friends every woman should have.” In it the writer states that here are 5 kinds of pals she counts on for completely different things. Each friend brings a different element to the friendship; in total she says they make her life that much better.

I stumbled across that article on the same day I got an email from a reader in Barbados asking if I could become his mentor. He was starting his own marketing and PR firm, was going to do his MBA and thought that one key to success was having someone with whom he could bounce around ideas.

Both the story and that email got me thinking, are there special friends that entrepreneurs should have in the corner? And if I had to advise a budding entrepreneur about the 5 qualities they should look for in 5 separate people what would I tell them to look for?

Here are my choices.

The Cheerleader
Every entrepreneur needs someone who’ll tell them they’re great, that their new idea will succeed, that they’re doing just fine. Starting a business can often be a lonely and often tough undertaking; someone who sets wind beneath your sail is best gift you can give yourself, especially when you’re now starting out. Whenever I found myself getting down in the doldrums, I turned to my cheerleader, a former professor, who along with his wife told me: “Entrepreneurship would allow me dance to the beat of my own drum.” I haven’t stopped spinning since.

The Mentor
Now that I being continuously asked to mentor ‘newbies’ I think back to my early years when I turned to the voice of experience i.e. another entrepreneur who was years ahead of me. Growing a business is hard, real hard but sometimes you don’t have to re-invent the wheel or even suffer the unnecessary hardship of not knowing. Somewhere there is a person who did what you’re doing. Chances are you stand a lot to learn from him or her.

The Networker
Sure you have a right to be shy, after all you’re new in the game, your idea haven’t flown off the shelf yet and you never did like rattling off about yourself. All that is okay because that where your networking friend comes in. She’ll introduce you to people, pick up the phone and get the door open to someone you’d been trying to sell to for months. Stick with her; soon you’ll see that networking is not only easy, it is crucial if you are going to succeed.

The Naysayer
Your tell-it-like-it-is friend will let you know that no one will buy your idea and give you a million sound reasons why. Listen to him! Your naysayer friend will give a fresh and different perspective from the cheerleader who always thinks your ideas are just great. Somewhere in the middle you’ll find your own reality.

The tech guru
Technology is crucial to every business’ growth these days. In the early days you probably won’t be able to buy each new gadget but it couldn’t hurt to know what’s out there. Moreover your tech buddy will save you a lot of time and money in the early days of your venture. She’ll become a life saver if only because your server is sure to go down.

Visit the writer’s website at www.mangomediacaribbean.com. Judette is the Managing Director of Mango Media Caribbean, a Trinidad based strategic communications and PR firm.

Energy. Persistence. Optimism

What a week! My lead project assistant La Toya always says there is never a dull moment at the firm. Coming to think of it, she may very well be echoing my own sentiments, which I often share out loud. But this week she was spot on.

We moved our marketing communications arm to an out-of-town location but retained the corporate communications and consulting arm of the business at the city office. We signed on to handle the reputation management and crisis communications of a major multi-national firm and also decided who would be our fifth new employee. All this of course amidst a non - functioning air condition unit, a low water supply at our new office and a moody wireless high speed connection that kept shutting down every 45 minutes or so.

And if that was not enough excitement I travel to Toronto to attend a regional IABC meeting. I keep telling La Toya that forget all the talk she's heard about genius and business smarts, it really takes three key ingredients to be a successful entrepreneur: energy, persistence and optimism.

BOOTSTRAPPING A NEW IDEA. Judette Coward-Puglisi

Selling our new software that measures the ROI on communication and PR campaigns has not been as hard as I expected. This week my company, Mango Media Caribbean tied up some loose sales ends with a public sector organisation and a multinational firm working in the oil and gas sector. We also expect a financial services company to sign up for a 12 month contract in the next four weeks. We made these crucial sales after three months of client prospecting and some long hours of doing our homework. In these months we looked at some of the best practices in some of the large corporations.

You see large companies that sell to other businesses have a massive advantage, an entire team that takes a pulse rate of the market sometimes by posing a singular question: "What do you want?" Once the need has been ascertained, another department takes over to make the deal happen.

At Mango Media Caribbean we are small but no less ambitious. Having determined what the corporate communications market was missing in Trinidad and Tobago, we spent months researching and analysing the new software acquisition. We developed a survey to make sure that we were not investing in something that no one wanted to buy. We took pains with the selection of our software developer and we decided who would be the clients most likely to buy into our new suite of services. Once we discovered who they were we then pre-sold them on the idea.

Why would a company be willing to buy into an idea? Our research indicated that while our clients- corporate communicators - were very interested in or PR measurement services, they didn't necessarily want to add this function to their already overtaxed list of things to do. If we could meet a need that no one else could, they were willing to fund the development of our new ROI communication services.

Be warned though, this is a very difficult strategy. It isn't easy to find scenarios where a big client has an unmet need that they a)realize is a need and b)haven't found a solution for. If you do find one, then you have the challenge of convincing the company that you have the expertise to develop and deliver a working product/service.. It helped that some of these clients were existing customers with whom we had a history and credibility.

Please don't get me wrong, if I am enjoying success with this it is only because I failed at it several times before. Like any entrepreneurial endeavor bootstrapping a business is incredibly hard work. But if you want a strategy that makes money from the beginning, this is one to look at.

The lesson here is that once you sell the idea/prototype, you have revenue that is somewhat guaranteed. Finding new customers thereafter becomes less painstaking.

Judette Coward Puglisi is the founder and managing director of a strategic comunications, brand development firm in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Visit her corporate website at www.mangomediacaribbean.com.

Independent thinking required for successful entrepreneurship

Independence. That’s why a majority of employees strike out on their own. Or so says a recent US survey put out by that country’s labour department. According to the survey there are more than 15 million self-employed people in America with independents representing one of the fastest growing sectors in that economy.
There is something glorious about being in charge of a small independent firm. The downfall is that sometimes the size of a small firm can preclude its effective exploitation of new markets; the advantage comes from knowing that your size allows for energetic experimentation.

Consider the growth of Elaine Singh, owner of a copywriting agency, “I believe that the reason for my success is that I have been able to align myself with some of the biggest advertising agencies in the business and created a win/win situation for us both,” said Singh. The 37-year-old is able to offer her specialised skills for a very reasonable price, the larger agencies embrace her because they can lower their employment and wage bill by cutting back on their health care, pension and other responsibilities.

Because of her firm’s size- Singh has one full time assistant and a part time accountant- she is able to continuously reinvent herself. She recently added photography and design to her list of services by forming strategic partnerships with other small firms. Singh is a believer in reinvention as the key to entrepreneurial success. “Reinvention is not about changing what is, but about creating what isn’t.” At the heart of Singh’s statement is perhaps a realisation that small companies in the new era need not be around forever and what matters most is the burst they may have in values creation rather than any dramatic claim of being around for 100 years.

Perhaps this may be the fundamental difference between the new enterprise and the old. Between the old firm and the new. The old enterprise viewed permanence as good. And set up vast building with glossy atriums to prove it. The glossier the atrium, well, the better the business. Atrium envy ruled. In the new enterprise there is no such envy because there are no such buildings. People are connected in wired quadrants that allows them to communicate, work and mange themselves in offices without walls and borderless communities. The size of the atrium is irrelevant, how high the mind can soar and what it can create in a short period of time are the determining factors.

In the new enterprise entrepreneurs like Singh recognises the need for a new reality, which does not surround exclusive bottom line issues. “If I focus on the bottom line and profits only I won’t be happy, instead I look around at other small business models and I would like to emulate those that place emphasis on their human community. Profits are vital but so too is the connectivity and the network.”
There are thousands like Singh running small firms, forming strategic alliances and setting their own strategies on how to function in the corporate world. There is no other alternative for Singh. “The idea of being a salaried worker in an organisation is unpalatable for me. There is just something about working for myself; I really, truly do love what I do.”

BUILDING A COMMUNICATIONS FIRM AT 29.

I bet you’ve seen them in the magazines. The young entrepreneurs, usually about 25. Bright. Converse on their feet. Cocky. At the height of the Internet bubble, they were the toast of the Valley and world. They possessed a certain bravado and were determined to make millions before they turned thirty. Some of them did. Most didn’t. But the ones who survived, like the creators of Google, helped turn living-room startups into billion-dollar companies. They amassed enough wealth to retire without a worry and decide what kind of life they want at 30.

These entrepreneurs defy the statistics; the research that states only the top quartile of entrepreneurs make more wages than their corporate-employed counterparts and that 75% of business owners would be better off financially with a good old regular job. Still, it is not the ability to make enormous sums of money that I marvel at, but the ages at which they begin. These entrepreneurs are 'mother’s-milk-in-my-face still young', and it raises a whole set of questions for many as to when is a good time to start a business.

I started my own branding and communications firms at age 29, and I will tell you if I knew back then the necessities for starting-up, I may not have taken my leap of faith. I didn’t have a network. Certainly no real business experience and no wealth of any kind to bootstrap my business. The only thing I had was optimism and the ability to live like a minimalist, with Crix and coffee at every single meal.

I subsequently read the best predictor of entrepreneurship is not age, not income, not wealth, it is ability. Oddly enough, think of a U shaped curve. People with very low and very high in ability tend to start companies. The middle usually stays put. Here’s what I read from a research paper on the issue:

We hypothesize that individuals with very low ability are more likely to take up self employment. These individuals may simply lack the discipline to work under someone else's authority, or in teams. They may also compare their low positions in their organizations and their low remunerations with those of higher ability individuals with similar human capital, and feel frustrated at the difference. They would thus be tempted to strike it out on their own. It is an empirical question whether their self-employment income would be higher than their paid employment income. On the other hand, individuals with very high ability are those with high energy levels, who get things done, who have strong interpersonal skills, and who are creative problem solvers. These individuals may feel that, in spite of their above average remuneration, they can do better on their own. This is because they have to share with their principals a substantial percentage of the value they contribute to their organizations. Finally, individuals of average ability are likely to be compensated in line with their human capital - they are therefore less likely to search for self-employment opportunities.

I knew on what side of the curve I stood from very early on, what I didn’t know was age can bring:

Money - It helps to have assets.

Connections - By the time you are 38, your friends and co-workers will have switched companies, changed jobs, and moved up the corporate ladder so there is easier access to decision makers and the people neded to help you get your business off the ground.

Wisdom - You don't have to learn or invent many of the standard processes .

Patience - You learn how to wait for the pitch that is in your business' capacity.

Still, as I grow older in the business and trade one set of skill sets for another, I recognise that age has less to do with success in business than opportunity and perseverance. Spend some time looking for the right opportunity to hitch your entrepreneurial star and watch your chances of success improve.