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Book Review: The Hockey Stick Principles, by Bobby Martin

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What do your favorite huge, successful companies have in common? What did their founders do right (or avoid doing) as they were building their business?

In Hockey Stick Principles: The 4 Key Phases of Entrepreneurial Success, Author Bobby Martin explores the patterns of behavior, strategies, and key decisions that define some of the most admired companies of our generation.

The four phases are:

1. The Tinkering Stage
2. The Blade Years
3. The Growth Inflection Point
4. Surging Growth

The book reviews each phase in detail, with real-world stories from founders both successful and unsuccessful. The reader can then apply the lessons learned while avoiding the bumps and bruises along the way.

Don’t just plunge into writing a finely crafted business plan; give your business idea some road testing and let the market have input. Don’t be afraid to shift your strategy or tweak your product along the way.

Sometimes you’ll have to take three steps back on one track just as you’re taking two forward on another. Th e sooner you begin getting used to this, the better, and it’s more helpful to not even have a conception in your mind—or on paper—of a linear orderly series of next clear steps.

The author gives solid advice for navigating each phase of the entrepreneurial journey. He also debunks some of the most precious beliefs of some new entrepreneurs– the need to hold new ideas close to the vest, the unhealthy focus on venture capital, and the reliance on friends and family for feedback.

I’d recommend this book for anyone who has an idea, and wants to turn it into a thriving business.

Where are you on the path to entrepreneurship?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

 

I was given a free digital copy of this book for review purposes. Opinions expressed are my own. ~Rosemary

6 Non-Obvious Entrepreneur and Founder Resources

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This blog was recently listed by the folks at GetVOIP as one of the “35 best entrepreneur blogs.” We appreciate the recognition, and it got me thinking about other lists of resources that might be out there for us “doers.”

It’s always good to refresh your toolkit, so I came up with six somewhat non-obvious resources for information, inspiration, and support related to entrepreneurship.

entrepreneur with laptop dog
  1. Startup Stash directory/
  2. 7 Great educational resources for entrepreneurs, from Upstart
  3. Kauffman Founders’ School video series/
  4. Quora, Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs category
  5. Pinterest “Entrepreneurship” category
  6. Top 25 Business Podcasts for Entrepreneurs

Have you found any useful new resources to help you in your entrepreneurial journey? Please share!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Are you an entrepreneur?

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By Robyn Tippins

Over the past twenty years, I’ve run several businesses and I’ve found that not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. And, even the strongest business owners have seasons when they should not be running the show.

open sign

Here are a few ways to tell if you are ready to be your own boss.

Motivated

When you are the boss, there is no one to tell you what to do, which can be both a positive and a negative. While it’s wonderful to pilot your own destiny, it can also be terrifying. You have to decide, each day, what tasks get your attention. It involves constantly asking yourself to prioritize your day, focusing on activities that move you forward towards your goals.

I run a content marketing agency, and I use Asana to manage my projects and tasks, and to delegate work to my staff. Basecamp, TeamworkPM and others are equally useful. You just have to give rigorous attention to planning and prioritization.

At Peace

There are some times in your life that being a business owner is not the right path.

In my own life, there were seasons that I decided employment was a better choice, and I don’t regret that decision. If your life is already out of control, adding the strain of managing a business is unwise.

A friend of mine is in the middle of selling her business because she had a stroke.

Another friend of mine has decided to take a season off for medical reasons. And I know 3 people who are getting out of their businesses because one is pregnant, one is divorcing and one has cancer. Running a business is at times heartbreaking, infuriating, terrifying and exciting – none of these are conducive to healing.

Willing

An entrepreneur has to do a variety of tasks, some glamorous and some not. If you are too good to perform the gritty work, this life is not for you. In the course of a day, I may bill for work that exceeds $200/hr and then go from that strategy based task, on to an execution task that bills at $20/hr. As you grow, you can hire for some of this, but in growth mode, the boss does that work.

You’ll also work long hours some days, and that can’t be a problem. I just made plans for a late evening meeting tonight (boo!) because we have clients with offices in Australia and Canada, so time zones were working against us. Three times this week I’ve worked past 7pm, either redesigning a website or writing a last minute press release. The hours can be long, but at least I have the flexibility to work them where I choose.

Vision

Not every business has to change the world, but your vision should be exciting enough to change your world. Whether you are building a lifestyle business or a business that will crush the giants, your vision will make or break it. Use this vision to inspire the troops, create your goals and make the hard decisions.

You have to look at the bad and weigh them against the positives. This lifestyle can be great. You are granted incredible flexibility and, if you try very hard, you can achieve a wonderful work/life balance. Your business can impact your local economy through both tax revenue and job creation. Beyond that, there is the potential to not only pay your own salary, but to build significant profits as you grow.

Are you an entrepreneur? Share your business and your elevator pitch in the comments below.

Author’s Bio:Robyn Tippins is Co-Founder and CEO of Mariposa Interactive. She has been managing online communities for 17 years, and her book, Community 101, is a primer on online community management. You can follow Robyn on Twitter via @duzins.

Extend Yourself

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Skywalk
Grand Canyon Skywalk

All of the good stuff happens in the little moments where you just say to yourself, “heck with it, I’m going for it.” When you extend yourself beyond what you thought was possible.

You’ll never see what the Grand Canyon looks like from an eagle’s perspective unless you have the guts to step out onto the Skywalk.

And you’ll never know if you can run a successful business unless you decide, and take that first step.

The first step seems intimidating, but there are ways to start building momentum that don’t involve tightrope-walking across the canyon (even Wallenda carried a pole for balance). This is not an exhortation to quit your day job and recklessly hang out a shingle.

This is a call to action. Any action that takes you in the direction of your goal.

If your goal is to start a business of your own, there are many “first steps” you can take. The Small Business Administration offers these 20 Questions to Ask Before You Start a Business. That’s a good, thought-provoking starting point.

Extend Yourself Toward Starting Your Own Business

  • Consider embarking as a “lean startup,” as described by Eric Ries. Go out fast with the minimum viable product and iterate from there.
  • Post your concept on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter. Get your supporters on board before you get too far down the road, and gauge interest in your idea.
  • Assess your key strengths (for example, using Strengths Based Leadership principles). This might give you insight if your struggling to decide among several different business ideas that inspire you.
  • Interview someone who is running a business like the one you want to start. Find out how they started out, what their roadblocks were, and what they learned along the way. Find small business owners to connect with at a site like AMEX Open Forum, and start building relationships.
  • Sit yourself down and bust out an actual business plan for your concept. Nothing takes off the rose-colored glasses like getting down to brass tacks. Who is your ideal customer? Exactly how will you reach them? What is your pricing structure? Do you need financing? Harvard Business Review offers an article called “How to Write a Great Business Plan,” along with lots of other resources.

It’s time to stop talking about starting your business, and start doing something. Get out of your comfort zone, extend yourself, and take that first step.

We’re here for you!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo courtesy of Leonardo Stabile, via Flickr CC.

How I Overcame the Challenges of Starting a Company With My Spouse

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By Alycia Hawkins

Some may call me crazy for choosing to work with my husband Chance Hawkins, but that is the easy part. My husband and I worked together these past two years at an online marketing company and it was actually great! The crazy part came when we decided to start our own online marketing company called Digital Hawkins 3 weeks ago. I guess we thought it would be just as easy as working together…boy were we wrong. I could write a novel on the ups and downs of our short venture so far into starting our own company, but for your sake I am summing it up into my top three struggles of starting a company with my spouse and how I overcame them:

1. Financial instability

The scariest part of starting a company is always money related. Not having enough to invest, not producing enough to be worth it, worrying about paying the bills, etc. When you start a company with your spouse it is DOUBLE the instability and risk. Here are a few things we did to help lessen our expenses in the beginning stages.

  • Utilize trades. Go back to the way of elementary school thinking and trade your Jell-O for a Snackpack (or in our case online marketing for business cards, beautiful graphics, etc.).
  • Get crafty. Now that we traded for our business cards, we had to get our name out. I am no sales person and cold calling just will not do for me. Since we didnt’t have money to hire sales people, we got a little creative. It was right around Christmas time, so I went to Dollar General and bought small christmas boxes and lots of chocolate goodies. I found local businesses that I knew I could help and created personalized Christmas gift boxes with our business cards stuffed inside and offered a free site analysis. This paid off greatly and gave people a positive and personal experience associated with our name.
  • DIY as much as possible. This may require learning a new skill. The amount of graphics we needed for our site was insane and we didn’t have the money to pay our designer for everyone. So I started to watch photoshop tutorials and do them myself. Not only does this save money, but who doesn’t like learning something new?

Even though we found a lot of ways to save money, there are some things you just have to pay for. But it was so hard for me to let myself invest any money into our company knowing it might not pay off. To overcome this it took a small obvious revelation. If I didn’t believe in my own business’s success, no one else would. But having to believe in my own capabilities lead to a deeper struggle my husband and I had to face…

2. My OWN insecurities

As embarrassing as this is to reveal, starting this company made me realize how insecure I really was. It is so easy to portray being strong, independent, and having it all together when you’re working for someone else and they take all of the risks…not you. I hate the idea that so many have about woman being weak, incapable of owning a business, not entrepreneur material and so on, but when the pressure was on me, that was all I could think! My poor husband would ask me questions like what I had done that day or what my next plan/strategy was, and I would suddenly lash out at him. The problem with starting a company with your spouse is keeping work problems and marriage problems separate. It took numerous arguments before we both realized the real issue. I was insecure and overwhelmed. This was by far the hardest struggle to overcome and it is a process of overcoming it daily (or just on those bad days). Here are a few things that helped me.

  • Reading inspiring articles on other women business leaders.
  • Setting reasonable goals, timelines, and daily tasks.
  • Praising small accomplishments and learning from failures rather than beating myself up about them.
  • Learn something new every day. Whether it was by reading an article on the latest online marketing practices, or learning a new trick in Google Analytics, it’s harder to feel insecure when you are continuing to grow.
  • Making sure my husband and I are always on the same page.

3. Time management

Because we are relying on our business to pay the bills, it is very important that we spend our time wisely. In the beginning stages it is easy to get lost in the never ending to do list. We both found ourselves bouncing around from one project to the next and not knowing who was working on what, instead of setting daily tasks for each other. I found this great article on time management that helped us overcome this obstacle. It talks about being productive instead of busy, focusing on one task at a time, reducing interruptions, and more. Once we started following these tips, we saw an improvement on productivity, insecurities, and were on a road to quicker financial stability.

Even though there were both pros and cons to having my husband by my side through each of these struggles, I would do it all over again. I love my husband being my business partner. It has been a short journey so far, but I have learned so much and cannot wait to learn more (knock on wood).

Author’s Bio: Alycia Hawkins writes about online marketing at digitalhawkins.com/blog. She is the Co-Founder of Digital Hawkins and Online School of Dance. You can find her on twitter as @Alycia_Hawkins.

How to Avoid Taking Out Large Loans to Fund Your Business

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By Bill Fay

Family, friends and even his college professors told Aidan Augustin he had a business idea worth pursuing, even if meant dropping out of college.

Augustin and his roommate, Neal Ormsbe, designed a smartphone application that would allow anyone attending a business conference to get connected to and stay connected with the speakers and other attendees at the conference.

The two were juniors majoring in engineering at the University of Florida, but everyone said the idea couldn’t wait, so they dropped out of school, gave the business a name, Feathr, and opened shop.

There was just one little obstacle left to overcome.

“Money,” Augustin said, citing the one little obstacle nearly every small business owner must overcome.

Augustin and Ormsbe figured they needed $50,000 to get started. That’s not big money, unless you happen to be 20-year-old college dropouts with meager savings and no assets.

“We knew banks wouldn’t want anything to do with us,” Augustin said.

Getting Started

Fortunately, family, friends and their college professors got them started. Their parents agreed to send the same money they would have sent if the two had stayed in school. Friends agreed to work for what amounted to minimum-wage salaries. Professors put some of their own money in the pot, and a small business was born.

It didn’t take Augustin long to learn why more than half of start-up businesses fail the first year.

“We needed a lot more money than we thought we would,” Augustin said. “We didn’t understand the realities of what it takes to run a business. We underestimated costs on everything.”

That includes the relationship costs when you take loans from people you know, with no guarantee you can pay them back.

“The conversations with our parents and friends got a little awkward because we couldn’t really show clear signs of progress,” Augustin said. “Professional investors know the risks involved so it’s a little easier to deal with them when you’re starting out.”

Making Gains

Augustin let Ormsbe and a couple of part-time employees do the development work the next year and devoted more of his time to fundraising. He started with the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, where he found $21,000 worth of backing.

Then he won a lottery that provided free tickets to a conference in Silicon Valley for software startups called the “Largest Hack-A-Thon In History.” It was sponsored by Barracuda Networks, which offered winners $25,000 and a seemingly endless supply of business contacts.

Augustin’s group beat 130 teams from all over the country and claimed the top prize. That led to a front-page article in his hometown paper, the Orlando Sentinel, and suddenly Feathr had some status.

“That article created a buzz about our company,” Augustin said.

Feathr picked up a $150,000 award from TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and contacts from the Barracuda Networks conference resulted in the first product sales. The 2014 budget is up to $450,000, most of which will go to pay salaries for the 12 full-time employees now working at Feathr’s offices in Gainesville, Fla.

“We don’t having the living expenses they have in Silicon Valley or New York City or places like that, which is a huge advantage for us,” Augustin said. “We can use our money more efficiently to hire more people and pay them actual salaries they can live on.”

The best news is that Feathr, now in its third year of operation, still hasn’t needed a bank loan to stay in business.

“We sort of hopped and skipped from one funding source to another, but we’ve made it so far,” Augustin said. “We’re working to keep it going that way.”

In addition to the crowdfunding, and loans from friends and families that helped jumpstart Augustin’s small business, another option to consider is tapping an annuity. Entrepreneurs who have annuities could use those investments to finance their budding enterprises instead of taking out loans.

The great thing about an annuity is that it’s your money. It’s already there, and you are not borrowing from a lender; however, since the annuity operates as retirement income, there are penalties to taking cash out before retirement.

When you take funds out of your annuity early you can expect the following:

  • A 10 percent penalty on the taxable portion of the annuity is forfeited if you are under the age of 59 ½.
  • The tax deferral benefits are in place to encourage long-term retirement savings, so the fee is similar to what you would pay on an early withdrawal from an IRA.
  • In most cases, if you cash out early, you will have to pay surrender charges. If your annuity carries a surrender fee, you should try to wait until the fee no longer applies. Surrender charges generally start at 7 percent and decrease incrementally, usually by 1 or 2 percentage points each year, until they reach zero.
  • Earnings on annuities are considered ordinary income, so you must pay taxes on any earnings when you cash out your annuity. This is in addition to the 10 percent early withdrawal penalty.
Author’s Bio: Bill Fay is a writer for Annuity.org, focused mainly on news stories about the spending habits of families and government. He spent 21 years in the newspaper business and eight more in television and radio, dealing with college and professional sports, then seven forgettable years writing speeches and marketing materials for a government agency.