5 Essential Tips For Small Business Startups

Any small business starts with a good idea. But pampering it along until the good idea bears fruit is tricky.

Paul Wheeler of Manchester, Vt., who with a partner made Life Is Crap a successful business that markets millions of dollars worth of merchandise, shares some pointers on how to negotiate the rapids of getting started until you come to more peaceful waters.

Tip #1 – Ask Experts For Assistance

Before you launch your small business, be absolutely certain you have your idea firmly in your grasp. False starts make expensive lessons. Focus on what it is you want to do. Research to learn what is available that will move you toward your goals. Find out what the competition is likely to be. Be certain before you begin that you and those you may be working with have the skills necessary to achieve your goals. If there seem to be gaps, look for advice. Communicate with others who have experience in the area you are looking at. There is much available just through a search of websites that represent people who have ideas similar to yours. Borrow from them, but be wary of such things as copyright, intellectual ownership and other legal realities that could land you in hot water. Many businessmen who are dealing with the same kinds of things you want to do are often willing to give you a little of their time. Ask. Wheeler advises that “The ability to recognize what you don’t know is first and foremost.”

“You don’t personally have to have expertise in everything,” he adds. “Look for the best help you can get.” In his case, that involved gathering a small group that represented artists (they sell clothing and other items printed with “Life is Crap” messages) and others with business and marketing experience, Their business is based on humor, so it was essential that the creative element share that sense of humor. If you find yourself mismatched with any of those you will be working with, remedy it sooner than later. Too many points of disagreement can be fatal to even the best ideas. When you are sure you have found the right combination, let others do their jobs. “Let them flourish,” Wheeler says.

Tip #2 – Be Consistent

Stay consistent. If you are discouraged too soon, your business will be affected. Look ahead to plot where you are going. Set achievable short-term goals and stay committed to them. Make adjustments when you need to, but don’t jump from one thing to another. “Do it without losing sight of the underpinnings of your business,” the Vermont small business owner advises.

Tip #3 – Have Faith That Things Will Work Out

Wheeler acknowledges that a bit of luck now and then helps. One of the new twists for “Life is Crap” involves putting designs on Life Is Crap checks. And that little venture was pure serendipity, he says. He was attending a trade show and chanced to meet someone in the check printing business. A little casual conversation and voila! But the key element here is that Wheeler was in a place and at a time when other creative people were gathered. Even serendipity needs a hand sometimes.

Tip #4 – Have Empathy For Your Customers and Employees

He lists a number of qualities that he believes will help people starting a business: Have empathy for employees and customers. Identify with people. Hone your analytical skills and if you feel you are lacking, find someone who can do the job for you. Be able to laugh at yourself. Learn to really listen to others. Recognize that they may have something important to offer. Cultivate humility and patience. Try to stay fresh and open to innovation because things change. .

Tip #5 – Love What You Do

Most of all, you “need to really love what you’re doing and come to understand it thoroughly. If you are ready to “work morning to night,” he says, “You’ll probably make it. But people who have great ideas go bankrupt every day.”

Life Is Crap? Entrepreneur Capitalizes On The Fact

Everyone who is actually inhaling and exhaling on a regular basis knows it. Life is crap. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we end up in the soup. Anyone over two has already learned to expect the unexpected. (Actually, it starts long before you reach two, but Mom takes care of it. It’s part of her crappy life.)

So, what’s a person to do? Paul Wheeler believes the only answer is laughter. The whole focus of his company — predictably named Life is Crap — is to take the inevitable, put it up front and visible and laugh it off. “It’s our mission,” says Wheeler of his Manchester, Vt., company. Together with his partner, Ken Lefevre, they have successful brought the company to the marketplace.

“Everything we do revolves around the idea that crap happens and that laughter is the cure.”

That means the message shows up on T-shirts, caps —anywhere an individual can make a statement on the way things are in this troubled world. The company is now expanding into checks that give folks a frequent opportunity to reflect on the vagaries of life and apply their sense of humor. “We’ve seen what works, now we’re scaling up. We’re always looking for ways to expand.” Always within the boundaries of the basic concept, he adds. That careful attention to sticking to initial principles has turned Life is Crap into a $10 million dollar enterprise.

If you ended up with a bad split in the bowling alley, there it is—a shirt showing the ball rolling easily between the two widely separated pins. Out of wine? Lament the fact with a public display of the empty glass. The bicycle depicted crashing into the pile of dirt at the bottom of the hill? It has happened to all of us. Wheeler and crew simply take the universal hazards of everyday living and put them out there where everyone can laugh along. The company customizes such items as magnets, books, calendars, shirt, caps, towels, hoodies, key rings, shot glasses, beer steins, decals, greeting cards, page a day calendars items— any desired surface that will accommodate an image.

Looking at the irritations of life might seem like a negative approach, but those who retail his products don’t seem to mind, Wheeler has found. No one has ever complained. Of course, that means finding the best outlets for Life is Crap merchandise. Someone lacking the sense of humor to appreciate the products, obviously, isn’t the one to present them to his purchasing public, Wheeler has found. The bah-humbuggers who refuse to find humor in life are to be avoided. And there are, believe it or not, some “crap” areas that don’t translate well to the buying public.

There have been some bombs along the learning curve. The company thought that politics was a logical target for its kind of humor and found that, in fact, no serious person of any political persuasion wanted anyone publicly poking fun at their well-known areas of crap. That venture was a failed effort that cost time and money, he said.

Another spot too sensitive to subject it to humor, the company found, is the current economy. No merchant wanted his customers reminded that times are tough. The popular idea of what’s funny changes with time and events, Life is Crap has found, but there is always plenty of grist for its mill in just the ongoing, everlasting irritations that humans endure. The company expects to continue to thrive on items that make the enduring easier.

The whole road to success, Wheeler said, has been a process of trial and error. When the group started, they were up against the same basic questions each new small business faces. How to put their ideas into concrete products. How to find the best business model to meet their goals. How to allocate the existing resources most effectively. Where to find the most effective market outlets. They spent a year in development.

To date, the company has developed some 500 images, licensed them and marketed through over 1100 stores. As the small business got a toe hold in the market, the next logical step was putting the goods online, he said. “We buy back product from the manufacturer and sell it online. We’ve done well and have seen it grow. Now we are focused on getting traffic to our site.”

The basic concept for Life is Crap requires employees who are in tune, he said. The group is small—just five employees—but they comprise the gamut of artistic and business savvy that is making Life is Crap a growing concern. Being constantly alert to possibilities has contributed to the growing of the company’s product lines. Pure serendipity, in fact, had a hand in bringing designer checks into the fold. Wheeler, et al, met the owner of Carousel Checks during a trade show. There was an exchange of ideas and voila! Another licensing arrangement was born.

In 2012, the company will be focused in building and expanding our direct to consumer internet business. New products to be launched include several other related sub-brands: Life is Poop — for infants, Life is Ruff for dog lovers, Old Life is Crap for Senior Citizens, College Life is Crap for College Students and Life is Beer — for BEER LOVERS.

The fact that life is crappy is not likely to end soon. There is always the bird overhead looking for a place to unload. That bodes well for Wheeler and Life is Crap as they look for new targets for their brand of humor.

Young Entrepreneurs Paint The Walls

Business Week magazine reported that over the last ten years, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group of people. Since some of these people have had to reinvent their careers because of job loss or lack of being prepared for retirement, that makes sense. However, the under thirty group seems to be making some significant contributions.

The 2008 invention of erasable paint was the brainchild of three college roommates. John Goscha, Jeff Avallon and Morgan Newman, all graduates of Babson College, ranked #1 among all business schools for entrepreneurship, got together and developed this product.

Class instructors at Babson College often require students to brainstorm with each other to find the best solutions to problems. When John Goscha, Jeff Avallon and Morgan Newman became frustrated with the small area of white board they used to write down their own brainstorming ideas, they wondered if they would have a more productive session if they had a bigger space to write on. After hanging paper all over the walls to help them have a bigger writing area, they came up with the innovative idea of using a paint that would act as a whiteboard. These three men believed that if you could land a rocket ship on the moon, then certainly you could create a paint with an erasable surface.

Their plan to create a unique paint presented many challenges. They worked with two different labs to create the paint. Paint samples, when applied to a wall, produced an unappealing crackling effect, giving the wall the appearance of a shattered window. Other paint samples would dry and start to sag and droop. Finally, the chemists at both labs claimed the job was impossible. At this point the three were in debt and without a product.

Following in Thomas Edison’s footsteps, they continued on, despite failing results. Persisting in following through with their product plans, the entrepreneurs contacted CAS-MI laboratories in Michigan. CAS-MI, a firm that specializes in coatings and paint testing, has a friendly company motto that says “problems in – solutions out.” Within a short period of time, the formula for erasable paint was created. After testing the paint and finding that the erasing was flawless, the three men were pleased. They launched their new erasable paint product in June of 2008.

At a national trade show, they covered a 3,000 square foot wall with the erasable paint. It wasn’t long before people were impressed with the new paint and could envision using the paint on all kinds of surfaces. The paint appealed to cash strapped schools who couldn’t afford to invest in white boards. Customers for the new paint included businesses, schools, universities, and government agencies. Companies and businesses like Nike, Microsoft and MIT quickly became advocates of the new erasable paint.

The new erasable paint became so successful it began to change the business of white boards. In 2009, company sales reached up to $2 million. In 2010, sales were close to $12 million. Sales for 2012 are projected to reach $250 million and the reinvented paint is now sold in twenty different countries.

John Goscha, Jeff Avallon and Morgan Newman ranked number 13, 14, and 15 respectively in Inc. magazines’ “30 under 30″ – America’s coolest young entrepreneurs.

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Do Small Business Start Up Strategies Work?

Small business start ups can help you to take back control of your financial future. Developing a small business is not only possible, but is an excellent strategy to use in 2011.  Having your small business become successful is not beyond your reach. There are people doing it all the time.

Backcountry.com, a strong, successful company based in Utah, began in 1996 by two-time Olympic Nordic ski jumper Jim Holland, and writer-entrepreneur John Bresee.

They started their business in their garage, with $2,000, a website and no inventory. Now the company sells  premium outdoor gear online and has become a major player in the outdoor gear niche.  Today they have over 700 employees and sell products from over 1,000 different brands.

Jill Layfield, the new CEO of Backcountry.com reports that growth in their business has gone from a high of 3,000 orders in a day to new high of 40,000 orders in a day. Her advice to business startups is to stay hungry and stay nimble.

Starting a new business is not without struggles, challenges and hurdles. Amy Cosper, editor in chief for Entrepreneur.com says that the biggest mistake small business start ups make is not financially planning properly. Funding the startup business is one of the biggest hurdles you will have. Lines of credit are disappearing. Banks are not loaning money. However, if you do have a good business plan and can communicate it effectively, the money is there and you can find it.

The second mistake is not having a clear picture of what your business really is. “If you cannot tell me your business idea in two sentences or less, you really have to rethink it.”

Cosper’s best advice is to really know the market you are going into and understand the competitive landscape and the financial modeling. “The biggest pieces of advice I have to give you is to never take no for an answer and follow your gut. It’s more gut than it is spreadsheet.”

Entrepreneurs need to realize that there really is no ceiling on the amount of money they can make. Income ceilings exist in salaried jobs, but entrepreneurial risk takers enjoy the sweetness of life without the politics of others “opinions” about your job performance.

Facebook Characters In The Social Network Movie

Today, Oct. 1, 2010 marks the release of the movie, “The Social Network.”  The story about the development of Facebook.  Facebook has been recently estimated  to be worth $22 billion dollars.  Mike Morwitz, a venture capitalist said, “the product (Facebook)  helps solve a real problem for many people in a simple, elegant way.” Mark Zuckerberg created the social networking platform that changed the way the millions of people communicates.

As with any company, Facebook has interesting twists and turns during the creation phase and the building out phase of their product. Knowing a little bit about some of the other key players in this company can help you appreciate the evolution of a social network.

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin, a 26 year old born in Brazil, is a graduate of Harvard holding a degree in economics. He assumed the role of Mark’s business manager at first, however his role in the company diminished when Sean Parker was able to acquire venture capital form Peter Thiel.

He was the person behind the development of  the movie, “The Social Network.” At the urging of a friend, Will McMullen, Eduardo eventually  disclosed behind the scenes information to Ben Mezrich who later published a book called, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

Eduardo Saverin  won a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg which allowed his name to be listed as the co-founder of Facebook. He owns a 5% share worth $1.1 billion dollars. Part of the settlement agreement stipulates that he does not discuss this situation any further. Eight days younger than Zuckerberg, he is the newest member of the Forbes 400 Richest People In America List.

Sean Parker

Another key player is Sean Parker. Sean’s childhood brings to light how he became involved with Mark Zuckerberg.

Sean’s father, a  U.S. government oceanographer, began teaching him programming at age seven. When he was just 16 years old he was successfully hacking into various networks, some included the military and large national foundations. His obsession with computers led him to spend odd hours working through the night and basically having a hard time completing school work.

One night his father got angry with him because of his poor performance and grabbed the computer keyboard away from him. Although he told his father he hadn’t logged out of the program he was working on, his father ignored his pleas. He knew that his activities would be discovered.

The next day, his father pulled him out of school for a so called “orthodontics” appointment. Uncomfortable with the “orthodontics” appointment excuse, since he had no orthodontics, he anticipated his consequences. When he arrived home, the FBI was there waiting to interrogate him.

He was given community service for his punishment and for obvious reasons, barely graduated from high school.

At age 19, he invented the popular music sharing program, Napster.

In 2004, he emailed Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook and soon after they became partners.  Mark Zuckerberg said, “few people are as smart as he is.”  Once the President of Facebook, Sean was asked to step down because of his involvement with cocaine.

David Kirkpatrick, author of  “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World, says “He is one of the great serial entrepreneurs of his generation.”

“The Social Network,” opens today and should prove to be interesting for many social media fans and entrepreneurs.

Related Information:

Owners of Facebook:

Mark Zuckerburg – 25%
Accel Partners – 10%
Digital Sky Technologies -  10%
Dustin Moskovitz – 6%
Eduardo Saverin – 5%
Sean Parker -4%
Peter Thiel – 3%
Greylock Partners – 1.5%
Merich Capital Ventures – 1.5%
Microsoft – 1.3%
Li Ka-Shing – .75%
Interpublic Group – .5%
Five early employees – less than 1%
Mark Pincus & Reid Hoffman – undisclosed
Western Technology Investments – undisclosed

Google Awards $2 Million Dollars To Sal Khan

On Friday, September 24, 2010, Google awarded $2 million dollars to Sal Khan for his contribution in educating the world through his math and science videos. His website, Khan Academy is the largest virtual school on the web and it is free. When asked what he was going to do with the money, he explained that he is going to translate the videos into Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese and all the major languages of the world.

Sal began creating teaching videos in 2004, while working as a hedge fund manager. He wanted to help a family member learn math. The videos he made were posted to YouTube and started becoming popular with people all over the world. People would write in and tell him that they were able to pass algebra because of him. He saved some people from dropping out of school completely. He received so much positive feedback, that it inspired him to keep creating videos.

Since then, he has created over 2000 learning videos on subjects like algebra, basic math, calculus, chemistry, economics, finance, geometry, linear algebra, physics, venture capital, statistics and trigonometry and his web site has attracted close to 2.5 million views.

There couldn’t be a better qualified individual to learn from. Sal received a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT exams. He earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,one in mathematics, one in computer science and one in electrical engineering. He earned two master’s degrees, one MS from MIT and an MBA from Harvard.

Creating simple videos with basic tools, Sal has an exceptional ability to take complicated concepts and make them simple. Watching the videos is like being in math class where the teacher writes out equations on the blackboard. He is so engaging that some people say that they like him better on video than they do in person.

Sal has been dubbed as Bill Gates favorite teacher. “This guy is amazing, said Gates. “I’d say we’ve moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-may-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job.”

At a recent gathering held in Aspen, Colorado called the Aspen Ideas Festival, where leaders from around the world gather to discuss ideas and issues of global concern, Bill Gates spent time speaking about Sal Khan and his contribution to the world. Mr. Gates has used the videos to help his own children learn biology and algebra. Sal Khan was probably not surprised by this recent public attention because in 2009, he was awarded the Microsoft Tech Award for education.

Finding A Business Partner

Finding a good business partner may be a little tricky, but according to Max Levchin, co-founder of PayPal, it is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Max Levchin earned a bachelors degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where the first first Internet graphical browser, Mosaic was developed. This browser led to the boom of the 1990s and made the Web accessible to the ordinary person for the first time. Firefox 3, developed from this basic browser, had more than 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, setting a Guinness World Record.

After being influenced and taught at the same institution where Mosaic was created, Max decided to head for the Silicon Valley. Not intentionally looking for a business partner, Max randomly walked into a classroom on the Stanford University campus, trying to get out of the heat and searching for an air-conditioned place to sit.

He sat in on a lecture given by Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel’s expertise in business and entrepreneurship inspired Max to chat with him after class. The next day they met for breakfast and he shared with him several ideas he had for business projects. This meeting was the beginning of an extremely profitable business partnership.

They ended up creating a company called PayPal, an online payment processing company which allows people to send money to each other in a completely new and different way than they had ever been able to before. PayPal sold to eBay on July 8, 2002 for $1.5 billion dollars. Max’s share was worth $34 million and Peter Thiel’s share was worth $55 million.

One of the qualities of a good partnership is that the partner can tell you when your ideas are good and also when they are just way off base. The success of the partnership depends on you choosing the right person.

Some partnerships last a lifetime and end up being good for both parties, while others may last half a life time and end up with one or the other sending their partner down the river. Choose your business partner as wisely as you would choose a marriage partner.

Who Is Max Levchin?

There are many people who can be considered pioneers in the development of web technology and most seem to be millionaires or billionaires. Max Levchin is no exception. Who is he?

He is a thirty-five year old, computer scientist and entrepreneur. He was born in the Ukraine, and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991 under a political asylum. He earned his bachelors degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Accomplishments

In 1997 he co-founded two companies NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media.

In 1998, he co-founded FieldLink with Peter Thiel and John Bernard Powers. Powers left the company and the company name, FieldLink, was soon changed to Confinity. The two partners, Levchin and Thiel then developed  the popular payment product known as PayPal. After merging with a company called X.com, the official name of their company was changed to Paypal Inc. Levchin was well known for developing the anti-fraud component of PayPal called CAPTCHA a process that will differentiate computer input from input by human beings.

PayPal went public in 2002, and shortly afterwards, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion dollars.  When PayPal was acquired by eBay, Levchin’s interest in the company was worth $34 million dollars.

Levchin did not remain idle after this aquisition. In 2004, he went on to create yet another company called Slide. He invested $7 million dollars of his own money in this company. Funding was also acquired from various venture capitalists. The company was first developed to allow users to organize photos on their computers and post them to personal blogs. Later it became known for creating applications that became very popular on Facebook. Some of the applications were “Top Friends”, FunWall”, “My Questions, “Fortune Cookie”, and “Super Poke”. By 2008, Super Poke Pet was launched were you can care for and buy things for a virtual pet.

On August 6, 2010, Google purchased Slide.com for $182 million dollars. Levchin received $39 million dollars for that sale. Shortly after that, on August 25, Google offered him a job as the Vice President of Engineering.

Advice To Entrepreneurs

Max Levchin’s best words of advice to other technology entrepreneurs is to try your best to find a good co-partner. Having the checks and balances from another person that you have respect and trust for and the ability of that person to tell you when you are way off base at exactly the right time is extremely valuable, if not the most valuable thing.

Future Plans

It will be exciting to follow his next accomplishments as a new Vice President of Engineering at Google.

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