You have to take care of business, operations, and sometimes there are just costs out there that you’ll have to pay due to the [...]]]> Sometimes, budding entrepreneurs don’t understand that making money is a long term process. It doesn’t just happen overnight, and you don’t suddenly make millions without blood, sweat, and sometimes tears.

You have to take care of business, operations, and sometimes there are just costs out there that you’ll have to pay due to the fact that you start out with low volume of sales. I think that’s the key. Step by step, one of the biggest issues I run into is that people believe that they’ll make money off the bat. Their time schedule is completely off, and they believe that if they bring a product to fruition, the people will come. Having been around the block a few times, I personally would recommend that they shoot for their first dollar in profit. Then you shoot for ten, then a hundred.

When you’re off to the races and making ten thousand dollars a month, come give me a call. Because then you’ve successfully made it well enough to hopefully be self-sustainable. And that’s what the first major milestone of any business. To get there, you’ll still have to make that first dollar. So don’t worry less about the expenses, and more about the profit. The only reason that you would worry about expenses is if you’re selling for a loss per transaction. Then there’s something wrong with the process itself.

Here is the difference. Contracts in general are legal [...]]]> I was reading a local article where a website developer was making a big fuss about the differences in detail in a purchase order and a contract. And I thought, wait a second here, a purchase order is a contract. They’re called one-off contracts.

Here is the difference. Contracts in general are legal documents that bind two parties into doing something. You can put as much detail or as little detail in these, but to be royally screw yourself in a court of law, corporate counsel will always detail it into oblivion. Easiest way to protect yourself is to detail away if you don’t have counsel running all of your business gigs. Purchase Orders are made by the purchasing agent where what is needed, at what time, and at what price is specified. Once this is accepted by the vendor, then it is also a contract that is enforceable. The only thing it means is that it’s a one-off contract which means it’s a one-time deal. The purchasing agent has to create another purchase order to send to the vendor, and the vendor has to accept it to create another binding contract. Again, these are contracts which means the vendor can negotiate and put in more details the same as the purchasing agent before sign-off.

What I didn’t get in the article itself was the fact that there was some discussion on level of detail in a purchase order versus contract, which is completely incorrect. Purchase orders must be signed off by the vendor to be accepted which provides the level of specification. It’s like a RFP but coming from the buyer instead of the vendor providing one. This ensures that all of the questions are asked by the vendor on what you are and are not doing when you walk into this contractual obligation.

Another interesting tidbit that I gathered from the article and quotes was that the purchase order was somewhat more generic. Having done enough contractual work in my life on similar contracts, I have to say that this is where you get burned as a vendor. In accepting a contractual agreement in a more generic and broad sense, you are bound by the contract to do all the nitty gritty detailed work that you didn’t “foresee”. And the court of law doesn’t change in this fact as you can see from patent law where if a broader patent is granted, then that broader patent usually is the one that is being infringed upon by the more specific patent.

Granted here, I’m not a corporate lawyer, but I’ve had to deal in my life with enough contracts to know when you’re going to sign into a really nasty situation or not. Most contracts have ways out, and so do purchase orders, but they have to be written in. If not, the county in this case technically could pursue this in a court of law from the details of the transaction given. Whether or not they would is up to to them.

We chatted for a while about the financial sector, and we started down the path of what was going on in my life with my online accounting gig. Needless to say, a life of an entrepreneur [...]]]>

Today, I gave a call to a good friend of mine.

We chatted for a while about the financial sector, and we started down the path of what was going on in my life with my online accounting gig. Needless to say, a life of an entrepreneur is not a bed of roses as many would like to believe. It’s hard work, a lot of sweat, tears, and heartache. But many would let you know that they wouldn’t trade it anything for the world. Even when times are tough. And strangely enough, the average age of your entrepreneur is actually closer to forty to fifty. I suppose experience in the workforce has something to do with it although the Internet itself has changed that for the better.

But what really got me was the next thing he told me over the phone.

“You’re doing right by your business. You’re putting your heart and soul into it and you are looking after your customers. That’s what counts.”

It’s funny that one of my uncle’s also told me something similar a while back as well as members of family that knew about the startup. It’s always good to hear praise that’s not prompted and people that support you from the sidelines. Because, when times get bad, those are the comments that you can rely on to help you break through the clouds.

Customer relations is something that any person that has been in any corporate CSR position knows it ranks solidly as the very first thing. If you don’t listen to your customers, you won’t have a product to sell. Many larger corporations over time fail to take this into account, thinking that they can [...]]]>

Customer relations is something that any person that has been in any corporate CSR position knows it ranks solidly as the very first thing. If you don’t listen to your customers, you won’t have a product to sell. Many larger corporations over time fail to take this into account, thinking that they can produce something that is state-of-the-art and customers will just flock to it. While I’m not saying that this doesn’t happen, it is seldom and rare. It takes a great outside-the-box thinking company to provide customers with such products without listening to them.

This particular video by Jeff Bezos, shows that if you’re not willing to commit to your customers, then you’re at a serious disadvantage. In this video, he highlights some key points.

• Obsess about Customers

• Invent
• Think Long Term
• Always Day #1.

I’ll let the video speak to what it means, if you don’t understand this particular business strategy. But what is important is that once you get past the first two points, the third comes as the corporation matures. And the fourth point is just a circular aspect that redirects you through the same strategy instead of working from a top-down point of view.

If there is ever one thing to take away from all of this, remember that in your corporation regardless of what it does customers are your primary concern. Always.

Don’t get me wrong, it does work. But it’s usually predicated by developers that believe they know what the next best thing is (what entrepreneur doesn’t) and instead of [...]]]>

One of the biggest mistakes of product development is the whole “build it and they will come” mindset.

Don’t get me wrong, it does work. But it’s usually predicated by developers that believe they know what the next best thing is (what entrepreneur doesn’t) and instead of listening to what the users want, play off of what they think users will want. But in an innovation play, there designing from user feedback is probably not only the safest way to do things, it’s also the most effective. Believe me when I say that having seen over a decade of product designs come and go in the telecommunications industry, sometimes you wonder why people choose to use market research instead of just going to the mall and asking people what they thought about your brand. Active research, not passive, is what gets results.

Another great mistake is the assumption that because you’re in the in-crowd with technologies, that everyone else will soon be. That’s why when I read about this study recently released by Accenture on how the majority of Americans are not in-tune with the latest of web technologies, I wasn’t surprised. At all.

Part of my responsibilities at my startup is to see trends and plan based on what business owners need and want in their small business accounting solutions. And one of the first key factors that I had identified was that most small businesses knew very little about accounting. Let’s be honest here… if the opposite were true, then we would not have so many training classes on how to do your business financials in not only book format, but at local community colleges. Thus, you realize that the current market does not satisfy the needs of their customer base.

In the end? The best way to look at any product development is to do a sampling of your potential user base and find out if your newly launched product will make an impact on their business with as minute a learning curve as possible. If not, then you have to justify all sorts of reasons on why you are pushing forward. If so, realize that you’ll be bearing much of the development burden due to figuring out the process behind the ease of use.

What’s interesting about this setup versus your ordinary incubator was the fact that it took the experience of established entrepreneurs or serial entrepreneurs and placed [...]]]>

I recently had the chance to read about Capital Factory out of Austin, a startup incubator that helps get those entrepreneurs off the ground.

What’s interesting about this setup versus your ordinary incubator was the fact that it took the experience of established entrepreneurs or serial entrepreneurs and placed them at the disposal of the startup for a period of time. You not only got seed money begin, but you also gained the knowledge base of people that have made it and more importantly, people that you could trust to tell you what NOT to do.

And it got me thinking… there are two business incubators here in the Triad. There is the Babcock Demon Incubator, and the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship. While both of these have started out with the initial thought of business incubation, the beauty of Capital Factory lies in the experience that you attain from the mentors. It’s almost like setting up your Board of Directors right off the bat with people that have been through what you are about to go through.

The greatest help a startup could achieve in the hardest times are managing to wade through the drudge of business operations where some decisions could make or break the company. Every corporation makes these mistakes, and few survive to talk about it. But the goal is to be one of the few and those mentors could establish a great positioning for these businesses.

It’s not good enough just to have a business, but to have someone understand how to drive your business to success. I truly believe that draws the definitive line between the mediocre business people and the great ones.

Strange that universities are seeing a rise in entrepreneurs and that they’ve even gone through the trouble of creating programs and degrees on how to be one. But in the midst of it all, and having lived and loved the life of one, I have to say [...]]]>

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Strange that universities are seeing a rise in entrepreneurs and that they’ve even gone through the trouble of creating programs and degrees on how to be one. But in the midst of it all, and having lived and loved the life of one, I have to say that I can’t see the value in this type of education.

The problem here lies on the basis of entrepreneurs being an experience based passion versus what college administrators (or probably more likely business school administration) deem as something that can be educated. If this is offered by the business school, then I forewarn anyone that does take this education. First, the degree doesn’t tell you the hours you work. Many serial entrepreneurs often put in eighty to hundred hour work weeks just to live off mere table scraps. It’s the love of creating something and dreaming big that drives these people, not what someone tells you. The other is that you’ll be learning and committing to every profession in a business until you actually can afford more employees. Most think that it’s sitting back in a cushy office or getting funded by angels and VCs and that there’s not insane pressure. But in fact, bootstrapped entrepreneurs are dime a dozen and those that are funded are just cream of the crop. You will be doing the heavy lifting of everything from accounting to janitorial. Whatever you need to do to make the company fly.

With all that being said? Startup businesses that fail are still a whopping nine out of ten. That’s a pretty scary number for those that even want to pursue this dream. It’s the love of it that drives, not anything else.

So with all of that, I just don’t see what exactly collegiate programs could offer to actually show the true pains and wonders of being an entrepreneur. You can’t teach certain things and this happens to be one of them. Perhaps these programs are also business incubators? In that sense you would need professors as business advisors and council and that gives a sort of wing for the young college student to at least find some shelter from some of the risk.

As they say, with great reward comes great risk. Being in business for oneself is one of those types of passions.