Posts Tagged ‘entrepreneur’

One of the entrepreneurial buzzwords I have heard in recent months has been “elevator pitch.” Many networking groups have been pushing elevator pitch events as can be evidenced by the 45 upcoming meetups scheduled for elevator pitches or pitch parties. And 35 groups talk about elevator pitches in their description. But as someone who has attended many networking events and heard just about every entrepreneur at New York Entrepreneur Week pitching their idea, I think that the elevator pitch is no longer the key but rather the “pitch to pitch” is.

Lets face it; we no longer have the attention span we did 5 years ago. Twitter has shortened our attention span to 140 characters, TiVo has taken away our ability to sit through a commercial and all these blackberries, Iphones and Ipad like devices have destroyed our ability to do one thing at a time. Think back to Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, we saw an incredible spectacle. The most popular free agent, the man who will be bringing millions to the team that signs him, created a show to declare who the winner is. Regardless of where he went, Lebron James would be making millions and have endorsements worth much more than that. While his decision made some people jump for joy, other break down crying and others bashing him for this overly orchestrated event, there are many lessons that can be taken from what watching the whole process of Lebron going through free agency, some positive and others, negative. Below are four very important Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a great article from Careerbuilder.com on people taking on internships at various stages in their career and why they do it. I am featured in the article for my work with New York Entrepreneur Week. The read the article, please click here.

Recently, I saw a post on twitter by Gary Whitehill, founder of New York Entrepreneur Week, “One of the hardest things to understand in life is: You’re not what you are, but what you’re perceived to be.” In this day and age of social media, I think this is one of the most important things for people to remember. First impressions last a lifetime and in today’s day and age, our first impression is made with the information that people see about us online. Let’s be honest, when we connect with a person at a meeting or are introduced through a mutual contact, the first thing we do is go to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to learn more about this person. If the individual has no information available or a spotty resume on these sites, part of the excitement of the initial introduction is lost immediately. The person will now have to overcome this void in order to make a great first impression.

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Recently, I wrote a blog for NY Entrepreneur Week entitled Becoming an Entrepreneur: Things to Consider. This article deal with things that people who are considering starting a business should think about before they make the jump. One of the points I mention is deciding whether or not to give up full time employment to focus on the new company. I personally went the route of starting a business while having a full time job. It helps keep cash flow going and provides for the important things, like health insurance. I know many others who chose to just jump right in and devote 24/7 to their new venture. There is no right way to do it and each person decides what is best for them.

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Very interesting article on perceived stereotypes for entrepreneurs. Goes to show that anyone can start up a company and not just kids out of college with no worries in life.

Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: He’s Not Who You Think He Is

As I am still relatively new to Twitter and LinkedIn, I spend a few hours each day following new people and connecting to their profile. On Twitter, I would say about half the people I follow have automated responses that get sent upon following them. They all sound exactly the same; “I am a social media expert, what can I do for you?” Apparently, everyone is an expert at SEO and they can all tell you how to make money using social media. I am really unsure about what everyone does with social media that makes them an expert or different than the next person.

My thoughts on social media experts are that there is no such thing as an expert. These are just people who have some free time and know how to use WordPress well. I honestly believe that the best way to make money as a social media expert is to convince people to hire you to speak or sell some sort of e-book. People will pay you to sit and set up key words and tags for their site, but all these sites make it so easy to do on your own. I may be completely off base and there may be something to the whole SEO market that I don’t know about.

I was recently contacted by a woman at a non-profit and she told me she had hired a social media/SEO specialist and spent a full month setting up Twitter and Facebook pages and following donors. At the end of the year, they realized that they did not get even 1 penny more from those donors nor did attendance at their events increase. In speaking to her, I realized that they had no idea what the social media sites even did. I gave her a few ideas that have worked for me but never the less, I don’t expect them to have great results for this company as they already failed on their first impression.

So please remember, sitting at a computer and following 10,000 people on Twitter does not make you an expert. It just means you have way too much time on your hands. Use your time to figure out how to take those follows and generate a cash flow. Because at the end of the day, time is money and the goal is not just to say you are an entrepreneur or self employed. You want to be a success and have money to show for it.

Most people start their entrepreneurial ventures when they are young and single for the very simple reason that you end up being married to your business. From the day you start your business until the day you exit from it, as a founder and the visionary, you need to be involved in every decision, idea and meeting critical to the success of your organization. You are on call 24/7, especially in this day and age of the SmartPhone.

As someone who started dating my future wife while she was working at an early stage startup and married her as I was starting my own company, I was lucky that my wife understood the life of late night emails and phone calls, working on weekends and a non-existant paycheck. However, despite my wife’s understanding and high tolerance for the risk of entrepreneurship, being an entrepreneur with a family is not an easy task.

As someone who has been through it, I believe that the following are some of the keys to making it work (Note: I am often guilty of not following through on these myself, but working towards them will make a big difference!)

• Family hour – 1 hour a night with no answering calls or emails and just sitting with your family talking.
• Shared calendar with your spouse/significant other – Let them see when you have meetings and events so you can plan time together, even if they need to call your secretary to schedule it.
• Bring your spouse to events – If you go out to a fundraiser party, bring your spouse. Let them have fun too!
• Take advantage of you being your own boss – Don’t use entrepreneurship as an excuse to miss important events or vacations. You can work from a laptop almost anywhere in the world and can answer emails from your smartphone in real time. When your family needs you somewhere, make sure to be there.

New York Entrepreneur Week (www.nyew.org) will be having a panel entitled “Entrepreneurial Ventures: The Impact at Home” in their April 2010 conference where there will be much more valuable insight into this topic. But it is most important to remember that most startups don’t succeed and it so it is most important to make sure your family will still support you whether you go big or go bust.

In the past few weeks, I have had various discussions with people regarding a shift in how people network. When I was in college just 7 years ago, every professor and career advisor taught you the importance of walking into a room, giving a firm handshake when you meet people, looking at them in the eye when you talk and asking for a business card so you can follow up via email or snail mail (for all kids out there, that is when you wrap the paper in an envelope and the guy at the post office brings it to the intended recipient). These days, I am attending networking events where everyone says “I will tweet you” or ‘What is your Facebook fan page so I can follow you and talk to you on your wall.” Even those who do remember to ask for a business card and follow up, never get in front of that person again because they lack the skills needed to network correctly and make an impact. The average attention span nowadays in less than 5 seconds and people do not have the skills to ‘hook” someone in that timeframe. How many times a day do you find yourself deleting emails from people you met once that want something from you, a reference, meeting or to discuss a new opportunity, because they didn’t make an impression when they met you.

While social media definitely opens many doors and avenues that were not available just a few years ago, they are also diminishing the social skills of the next generation. The inability to type a message in proper English and grammar and general lack of people skills is a big problem facing the next generation. I am sure the model of how people do business will change with technology, as it already has, but the inability to socialize and lack of people skills will have a longstanding effect on who will succeed. Remember, business deals don’t get done via twitter, they get done with a firm handshake.

I would love to hear other people’s opinions and thoughts on virtual networking and social media vs. in person meetings and attending real life networking events. I am hoping to start some kind of blog to deal with these issues and would love for some people who are interested in being part of it to email me through this site so we can get started on putting some content together. I am not the best writer but think it’s a hot button issue that will have long standing ramifications. I look forward to hearing your feedback.