What Happens When You Break Up With Facebook: Nothing

 

Here's your contradictory marketing idea for the day: One month after deleting its Facebook page, food delivery app Eat24 is on the rebound--with more downloads and response to other forms of marketing than ever.

At the end of March, food delivery app Eat24 deleted its Facebook page, explaining in a hilarious Dear John letter that it was frustrated with the social network's severely diminished free organic reach, and the company would spend its marketing dollars elsewhere.
Now, Eat24 has posted an (equally amusing) update to its blog Bacon Sriracha Unicorn Diaries, announcing the results of losing the previously significant customer communication tool: nothing. Or rather, nothing negative. In fact, Eat24 calls the breakup "the best marketing move we made all year," citing a 75% increase in app downloads the week after the split, and an email open rate that has risen from 20% to 40% over the past four weeks of weekly marketing emails. Not only that, the post includes screenshots showing that customers have actually been replying to the marketing emails with general kudos for the messages' entertainment value, or even requests to be added back to Eat24's coupon mailing lists after accidentally unsubscribing.
"When is the last time you accidentally(??) unsubscribed to some company’s mass email, realized your mistake (???), then actually took the time to contact them and ask to be subscribed again(????)?" says the post. "For us it’s exactly never. Zero times. We barely even want to read our own stuff when we’re done writing it, and yet we get these requests all the time."
Eat24 notes, however, that while many on the Internet cheered the Facebook dump, fellow marketers were less enthused.
"But everything wasn’t all wine and roses and nacho cheese fondue fountains," they write. "While most people were happy for us, some people (namely our fellow marketing professionals) felt like we needed a little tough love and self-reflection… which is a nice way of saying our breakup letter made them really f***ing angry, and they took to the comment section to let us know just how angry they were about it…A lot of you called us cheap for not wanting to spend money to promote our page or invest in Facebook advertising. The fact is that we’re totally willing to spend money (on stuff that works). In fact, we poured $1 million into Facebook last year. No joke (Just ask Dave from Accounting, he cries about it every day)."
The company also dismisses accusations that if Facebook wasn't working for them, perhaps they weren't using it right.
"Since we deleted our Facebook, we’ve seen a huge increase in open rate, more replies, and more sign-ups. If that’s content done wrong, we don’t wanna be right!" they write. "Nah, we’re not here to toot our own horn. Honestly one of the main reasons we’re happy our Facebook is gone is that there’s no record of all the dumb stuff we posted there. So anyway, it could be that people are opening our emails just to laugh at how bad they are, OR… maybe when one communication channel went down, our customers found another one to take its place."

From Fast Company

5 Keys for Maintaining Your Entrepreneurial Vision

 

The path of entrepreneurship is equal parts rewarding and challenging. The obstacles and setbacks along your path to success are always opportunities for growth, change and improvement, but let’s face it: sometimes your spirit falters when you’re in the midst of a tough spot.

It can be hard to keep your entrepreurial enthusiasm for your path and vision alive at some stages of the journey. Feelings of occasional doubt or discouragement are normal. It’s how you process and move past them that matters most.

Here are five keys to help you maintain your entrepreneurial vision and spirit.

1. Plan your work, work your plan. This doesn’t just mean your business plan. You need a daily action plan to maximize your time and stick closely to your vision. It’s common to feel overwhelmed by your to-do list, and those feelings can often give way to frustration and burnout. By maximizing a daily action plan that aligns with your long-term vision, you’ll be able to ease some of the strain by prioritizing. What do you have to do right now to reach your long-term vision? Once you have your list of have-to tasks, try delegating or outsourcing the other items to get back some time and push back the overwhelm you’re feeling.

2. Guard against negativity. Your spirits are going to sink if you’re constantly dealing with haters, doubters and otherwise negative people. You don’t want that anchor weighing down your lofty vision. Stay true to yourself, and as much as possible, minimize your exposure to negative people. If the trouble is with friends and family, you might have a harder go at this. Another tip: don’t take advice from someone you don’t want to emulate. Well-meaning advice givers are rarely qualified to be dishing out qualified information on what you should or should not do. Bear in mind the person’s qualifications and expertise before absorbing any advice.

3. Fortify your mind. One great thing about the modern age we live in is all the access to information we have at our fingertips. It’s up to you what you put into your mind each day. Are you filling your head with bad news, depressing stories or mindless television programs? To keep your spirits up and your vision in sight, consider motivating podcasts, uplifting audio books and other positive additions to your information consumption. As the song goes, “you’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative.” It’s age-old advice that will serve you well in keeping an optimistic outlook.

4. Embrace change. The only constant is change. You can’t be the mighty oak that stands tall and strong then topples at the first heavy windstorm. The great thing about entrepreneurship is by its very nature it makes you like a young tree in the wind: flexible, fluid and adaptable. It’s not about uprooting your vision or ideals -- those are the roots your business is planted in. However, if you can’t truly embrace change and even anticipate it proactively, your path will be difficult and your spirits in the dumps. Making change work for you can mean big innovations and creative solutions, so embrace the ambiguity and anticipate it.

5. Use history as a guide. The beauty of studying history is you get 20/20 vision. You can see how other great leaders and entrepreneurs did it right and exactly where they got it wrong. Make history and its general cycles be a study you constantly observe to help identify patterns and learn from the past.

From Entrepreneur

6 Lessons Beyoncé Teaches Us About the Entrepreneurial Mindset

 

Beyoncé recently spoke to OUT magazine about the traits she focused on in developing her latest album. Interestingly, as a professor of entrepreneurship, I can use these same six traits -- discipline, patience, control, truth, risk, and effortlessness -- to teach about the entrepreneurial mindset.

Discipline

Starting a successful business requires discipline: the discipline to wake up every day and unwaveringly believe that today is going to be better than yesterday, the discipline to get on the phone to make the next sale, the discipline to hammer out that next line of code or the discipline simply to do what needs to be done in spite of any obstacles. Discipline drives an entrepreneur (and Beyoncé) to continue past the limits where others often give up, stop and ultimately fail.

Patience

As the saying goes, it takes a number of years to become an overnight sensation. As any serial entrepreneur knows, building a successful business often takes time. In this day and age, when we are used to immediate gratification, the pace of building a successful business may seem like an eternity, especially for a new entrepreneur. While there are actions that an entrepreneur can and should take to reduce the time to success, patience is often a necessary part of the equation, in spite of one's best efforts to accelerate the process.

Control

Just as Beyoncé needs to maintain strong vocal and creative control over her music, voice and album, an entrepreneur needs to recognize the importance of control. That control manifests in many ways, including financial control, control over a business' ownership, controlling risk and control over the critical path a new business needs to take in order to be successful.

Truth

The primary task of an entrepreneur is to uncover a viable business model. Entrepreneurs, especially first timers, often paint a rosy picture of their business' prospects. This may include overly optimistic projections of sales numbers, social media activity or new member accretion. This rosy outlook may obscure the truth in discovering that viable business model and the ensuing successful business path. As a new business owner, it is critical that you set realistic, truthful expectations about your business.

Risk

Risk is inherent in any decision (or non-decision) we make. For an artist like Beyoncé, taking a risk means remaining on the cutting edge of music but also not alienating fans, or worse, becoming irrelevant.
For an entrepreneur, risks come in many forms: financial risks, time to market and competition, to name a few. Successful entrepreneurs understand the importance of minimizing risk. This may mean offloading or sharing risk with others who may have a greater tolerance or ability to weather a loss. Alternatively it may mean accepting the risk as a part of the pursuit of the business venture. In either case, clearly understanding, to the extent possible, what the risks are and how best to mitigate them is an integral part of entrepreneurship.

Effortlessness

When I worked in corporate America, every year I would be required to complete a self-evaluation. Even though I excelled at my primary job responsibilities, there were some things that I hated doing and that I frankly was not even good at performing. In other words, there were some tasks that just didn't come effortlessly. Every yearly evaluation, my manager would identify those same areas where I'd need to improve. Every year I didn't.
Successful entrepreneurs understand working effortlessly, or in other words, focusing on those skills that they are particularly good at doing and finding others to focus on complementary skills that come effortlessly to other people instead of trying to improve skills that inherently don't come naturally. Leveraging the talents and skills of other people allows entrepreneurs to focus on building the business while offloading tasks at which they simply aren't good.

From Huffington Post

How Can Entrepreneurs Survive a Recession? Handle It Like a Woman

Competent countries like the United States, Spain, Greece and Great Britain continue to grapple with the economic slump while speculations about another economic recession are rife. Interest rates are at an all-time low and investors are in a fix regarding where to invest.
During these volatile economic times, we seek solace in different recession-management techniques. As an entrepreneur you may be wondering — will the European debt crisis threaten to derail the world and my small business? If so, it’s time to learn recession-management tips from those equipped to handle it best — women.
Surprised … possibly confused?
Here are some interesting, startling and helpful facts.
“Everyone knows that men and women are rarely thumbing through the same book, let alone settling on the same page,” according to Bill Morrow, Founder of the investment network Angels Den. “Speaking as a Y chromosome-toting entrepreneur, it is not easy for me to admit this, but facts are facts, and it is the more frugal and pragmatic attitude that women bring to their business planning that will see them succeed where many of their male counterparts may fail in the impending recession.”
Recent research conducted by Delta Economics has shown that female entrepreneurs fared better than their male counterparts during difficult recessionary times that we have faced in the past. Some researchers also pointed out that these women entrepreneurs were the key to leading us out of the previous economic recession. These revelations have come as a pleasant and encouraging surprise.
Role of Women: Changing Times
The past 50 years have witnessed a dramatic change in the role played by women in the world economy. Women, who were earlier seen as providers of supplementary income, are now earning almost 45% of all household income. Research has shown that more than seven million families today are relying solely on the income of women for survival.
Women have continued to struggle for equality over the years. The world is now witnessing an unprecedented role-reversal.
Rise of Women Entrepreneurs

Recession leads to financial crisis and has some of the worst effects on the economy. As job-hunting becomes perilous during a recession, many people take to entrepreneurship. Therefore, many women pursued their dream of becoming an entrepreneur, which gave them an unprecedented opportunity to survive the recession.


Impact of a Recession on Women
It’s no secret that a recession comes with many new challenges. But are women better poised to deal with them?
Recent findings indicate that women remain unfazed by the impact of recession, in comparison to their male counterparts. Recession influences the business practices of women entrepreneurs, who go on to further develop themselves to survive in the corporate world. The impact is felt by women devising to improve and manage effective strategies for survival in a  financial crisis.

What Can We Learn from Women Entrepreneurs?

Here are five key things that we can learn from women entrepreneurs.
1. Dedication towards Employees
The key to achieving success in business is build a strong base. The workforce of any company plays a major role in strengthening the foundation of a company. In general, women are greatly concerned about their employees and build a good rapport with them. This increases their loyalty, and employees remain dedicated to their organizations even during difficult times.
2. Effective Public Relation Skills
Speaking from a male point of view, women are quite adept in getting their way — for everything. Why? Some may argue that a woman with effective communication skills can easily influence people.
Female business-owners possess unparalleled public relation skills and strong convincing powers. This makes women adept at marketing. During recession, when marketing is usually sidetracked, it is these women entrepreneurs who take the bull by its horns and emerge victorious.
3. Negotiation Skills
Women are extraordinarily good at negotiating, and often bag the best and most lucrative deals. Unlike their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs leave their egos aside and utilize their polished and refined manners while negotiating. This helps them procure the toughest deals, as (most) do not lose their cool easily.
4. Carefully Guarded Decision-Making
Women have a natural ability to remain calm and patient during the trickiest situations.
Their decisions are not influenced by rash, impulsive and over-ambitious behaviors. Being naturally adept at decision-making, women entrepreneurs think twice before taking any sort of risk. Women follow the risk-aversion technique and refrain from over-extending themselves.
This is an excellent approach during a recession. In prior recessionary periods, there were many cases where entrepreneurs downsized due to lack of funds. However, research indicated that women-led businesses underwent fewer office moves in comparison to their male counterparts.
5. Improved Access to Capital

Many of today’s women entrepreneurs have better access to finance. They have won trust of banks all over the world because of their cautious, well-planned approach towards business. Today if women have improved access to capital and are better funded, it is mainly because of their cautiousness in money matters.
Overall women have become more pragmatic and cautious while investing. They are passionate about their work and organize thorough market-research before investing in any business, no matter how lucrative it seems.
It is time that we battle the impending recession by incorporating the diplomatic approach of women entrepreneurs in business practices

From YFS Magazine

What does it mean to be a ‘rich’ entrepreneur?

 
Paul Jarvis is a Web designer and bestselling author, who’s obsessed with nature and hairless rats. His latest book, Everything I Know, is a guide to freelancing as a creative professional.

People assume that if they’ve heard of you, you must be raking it in.
The theory goes something like this: If you work for yourself and make things that other people buy, your income magically skyrockets past what an average corporate job would pay.
Many times, readers or people asking for website design quotes have told me, “Oh, but I’m not rich like you.”
To which I look around my normal house (outside the city, where it’s cheaper) that I rent and my VW Golf that’s a few years old and think, “Wait a minute, I’m not rich like me either!”
I also look around at the other folks that make things on their own on the Web, and with a few exceptions, they’re not rich either.
Our views get skewed because our interest is also skewed. We are more keen or likely to read about the blogger who made six figures with ads or the writer who made $60,000 on their launch day. These stories are interesting because they are not the norm.
It’s not as exciting to read about the person who makes an extra $10,000 a year writing books on the side or the person who brings in an extra couple hundreds bucks a months with their product. That’s not as sexy, even though it’s the average.
If you’re new to the game of blogging or online business or putting your art onto the Internet, I’m doing you a solid by telling you this without the typical industry BS: there are A LOT of people out here trying to sell you the illusion of riches.
Put up a website, master conversions and BAM, your bank account will turn into an ever-skyrocketing balance.
Right? Except, it rarely works that way, even if you do what you do well, and build a following.
As far as income goes, I can’t complain—I’ve worked for myself a long time and have some semblance, as much as one can, of a steady income.
I also squirrel money away, like, well… a squirrel.
I make enough to enjoy a comfortable life, and I don’t take that for granted—ever. More than half of my income comes from the Web design work I do, which is why web design work comes before anything else (like writing or making new and fun creations).
I consider Web design my “day job” even though I work for myself. And as much as I enjoy it, I’m not 100 percent the boss of me, since I answer to my clients.
Writing, making, playing with digital products online is more like a side gig. Sure, they bring in money, but not nearly enough to survive on.

Just a little bit of math

Let’s look at the life of one book (it could be any self-produced product, though).

Say you sell it for $5 (the average price of my books). If you sell 10,000 copies, the simple math is $50,000! That’s good damn money for one book. But, let’s say it’s sold on Amazon, so that instantly becomes $35,000 if you are in the 70 percent royalty bracket (otherwise it’s 35 percent or $17,500).
The mailing list to support that costs $1,200/year and hosting would be $400. Copyediting cost you $1,000. Editing was another $4,000 and artwork $500. Now, we’re down to $27,900.
This assumes you don’t need a professional website for the book or your brand. This also doesn’t include corporate tax (upward of 15 percent in Canada, since we’re socialist bastards), which brings the total to $23,715.
If it takes you about 12 months to do a decent job on a book, that’s more than $6,000 below the poverty line in Canada (currently sitting around $30,000).
In the above scenario, that book is considered a best seller – and 10,000 people is nothing to shake a stick at (even if you’re into shaking sticks).
And yet, it didn’t earn you enough to keep yourself afloat for a year, especially if you have dependents or live in a city where the cost of living is high (I’m looking at you, Vancouver Island!).
I’m being overly simplistic with the numbers, but they aren’t far off from real scenarios. Sure, most authors make a bit of money writing for other people, if they’re lucky, but most paid articles run $200/1,000 words.
Even fewer get paid speaking gigs, which thankfully, jump into the $1,000s. But again, not many authors even hit the 10,000 book sales mark. Given that there are something like 12 million books on Kindle, the percentage of them that are best sellers is no doubt less than 0.1 percent.
You also have to factor in the sheer volume of work it takes to put out and sell into the best seller range. The work before launch, the work daily to cultivate and engage with an audience, the work required to pump out the necessary “content marketing” for your brand as often as possible too. It’s almost a full-time job to make less than minimum wage while having an audience bigger than what most creators dream of.
Yes, there are exceptions—called exceptions for a reason—where some very smart folks can make five or six figures on a single launch day. The thing about exceptions though, is that they’re not the rule/average/typical scenario.

Sounds bleak, right? So why bother?

The biggest reason, at least for me, is that it’s enjoyable. I love writing books, and would do it even if only a handful of people bought them. I’ve found a way to produce and promote them that fits with me and my personal style. I still have a day job to pay my rent, buy my plant-based groceries and put diesel in my little car.
The second reason is that I’ve found creativity thrives on limitations. Since I refuse to use my Web design income to fund my books, I’m left with a small budget to make things happen. So I get creative. I trade, beg, borrow, steal (ok, not the last one).
I get off on finding new and interesting ways to promote or get things done that cost little to no money. I also get creative with my time, since I don’t have a lot of it to spend on my side projects. So I create daily practices to get into the flow of writing quicker. I group similar tasks together to get them done faster and I say no to a lot of other things (like TV and a massive social life) so I can spend time creating.
Another thing to consider is that you can keep making money off of books or products as you put newer ones out. Every time I release a new book, my back catalog has a sales spike. So over time, as more art is created, more money is made.
It’s certainly not quick (if you’re producing one book a year), but I’m in this for the long game, the life game, not the quick-wins-at-all costs game.
I also enjoy the diversification of both income and creativity. Money-wise, if my Web design business suddenly dried up, I’d at least have some income from books and courses to keep me going. If my writing income dried up, at least I’ve got Web design. If I don’t pump out a book a year, I still get paid to write articles.
Tying this back into a conversation about money, being creative has never paid well.
Record labels keep their artists in debt to them, book publishers pay little-to-nothing in terms royalties, and so on and so on, since the dawn of time. Business people take advantage of the fact that artists care more about sharing their work than making money.
A lot of people find it horrible that artists are taken advantage of like this, time and time again. But really, it doesn’t matter.
Creatives thrive on limitations and pain can make art better (although certainly, it’s not required). Even with the gatekeepers removed from the mix, where artists can now connect directly with their audiences, there are still costs involved and not a whole lot of money to be made. Now there’s faster and cheaper entry but much more noise to cut through.
Being a touring musician for years, I was under no illusion that writing books or making things for audiences to consume would net me any riches.
I made enough in a band to keep touring and pay for recording new albums, but that was it. Same goes for writing— most of the money I make gets funneled back into writing more. Not because it has to, but because that’s where I want it to go. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough for me to keep going with it.
There are so many people out there offering to teach you how to be “rich like me.” They might mean well, and even if they’re being honest about their riches, they’re an exception to the rule.
I would absolutely love to live in a world where art is valued and paid for at the level of Fortune 500 executives, but we don’t live in that world – at least, not yet. And that’s ok, for the most part, because we can make a decent enough living (even if our art is a side project) and support ourselves and our art, and then (not to sound trite or overly motivational…) we’ll become rich in lots of other ways.
I’m not saying I don’t like money or even that artists should be so noble that money doesn’t matter, because that’s not true.
Get paid for your art, and the more you can get paid for it, the more power to you. As long as the way money is coming in lines up with your values then by all means “sell out,” as often as possible. Making money from your art is awesome and rewarding.
Art rarely makes artists lots of money. Yet we do it anyway. Most of us have little to no choice in the matter, because we feel we’re called to create, regardless of the outcome or income. And even if you “make it,” it’s still a long and hard road to actually see those riches. But we’ll keep aiming for it.
For me, I’m not trying to figure out the next book that’ll net me millions of dollars. I’m looking for the next book that’ll connect with an audience, who’ll in turn pay me enough so I can write more books. Anything left is a bonus.

From The Next Web

9 Lessons in Entrepreneurship From Shark Tank

I don’t watch much television — with two small children and a business, I just don’t have time. But there’s one show that I DVR and watch without fail every week: Shark Tank.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, here’s the premise:
Aspiring entrepreneurs get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pitch their business to a panel of “sharks” — five self-made millionaires and billionaires including the likes of Mark Cuban and Daymond John — and ask for funding in exchange for equity in their business.
Basically, it’s the dramatization of one of the most stressful, sweat-inducing, make-or-break moments in capitalism: the business pitch.
On any given episode you’ll see amazing and innovative businesses secure hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) of dollars worth of capital, or you’ll get to watch what’s obviously a weird, laughably-bad business be eviscerated by the sharks.
This is of course a “reality” show, with those quotes firmly in place; while the businesses are real and the entrepreneurs really do spend an hour or two with the sharks getting feedback on their products or ideas, that footage is then spliced and edited together into 5 minutes of entertaining television. The businesses that are comically bad were clearly handpicked by producers for that very reason.
But while it’s crafted for your viewing pleasure, Shark Tank actually offers a good dose of practical, real-world business advice for would-be entrepreneurs. You won’t get an MBA equivalent education just from watching the show, but you’d be surprised by the amount of actionable business tips you can pick up just from tuning in each week.
Below I highlight nine of the recurring lessons in entrepreneurship I’ve gleaned from Shark Tank:
1. Learn how to pitch. If there’s one lesson you take from Shark Tank and this post, let it be this: master the art of the pitch.
Even if you don’t think you’ll ever find yourself standing in front of a bunch of venture capitalists, every entrepreneur needs to know how to effectively sell himself and his idea to his potential partners, employees, and clients/customers.
You’d think on a show like Shark Tank — in which people know they’ll be asking for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on national television – the entrepreneurs would prepare for their pitch like crazy.
But you’d be wrong.
I’d venture that 50% of the pitches on Shark Tank are absolutely horrible, 40% are so-so, and 10% are stellar. Some of the folks on Shark Tank just seem like they’re winging it, which makes for some awkward, yet entertaining moments.

“You have to learn how to communicate your vision. You have to practice in a mirror every morning. It’s the most important thing you can do because you only get a chance to make a first impression once. And when you stand up in front of sharks or any other investors you’ve got to be able to communicate why the idea works and why you’re the right person to do it.
I always tell young kids that I teach now in business school, ‘Look all this stuff you’re learning about numbers is great, but if you can’t stand up in front of your classmates and explain why you’re a winner and how you can be a leader, and how you can inform that business plan, you’re nothing… You’re just a nothing burger ’til that happens.’” –Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful

So how do you avoid being like the cringe-inducing pitchers on Shark Tank? Well, following the guidelines in our post on how to give an effective pitch (as well as what not to do) will put you leaps and bounds ahead of many folks. The gist of the advice in those posts is this: be poised, make your pitch sticky or memorable, know your business (and industry) inside and out so you can answer any question that comes your way, and play to the investor’s self-interest (show them the money!).
The best pitch I’ve seen on the show was from an 18-year-old girl who owns a skincare company called Simple Sugars. She was super poised (more so than many of the much older entrepreneurs who’ve been in the tank), she had a great story for her product (started the company when she was 11 to create an all-natural skincare product that was suited for someone who had eczema, like herself), she knew her business inside and out, answered the sharks’ questions and resolved doubts like a boss, and she clearly demonstrated how the sharks would make money investing with her. Her awesome pitch scored her a $100,000 deal with Mark Cuban. If you want to learn how to pitch like a pro, you’d do well to watch this young woman in action.
2. Hustle is necessary, but not sufficient. A common refrain entrepreneurs on the show resort to when they’re about to get the nix from all five sharks is:  “But I’m such a hard worker! I will toil night and day to make this business a success!” And every time, one of the sharks — usually Mark Cuban — will respond with something to the effect of: “You and everyone else on this show!”
We’ve argued that the world belongs to those who hustle. And it does. If you’re lazy, you’re not going anywhere in life. But in business, hustle is a given. You have to work hard to be a success, but working hard doesn’t guarantee you’ll be successful. If your business sucks and your product is a complete lemon, it doesn’t matter how hard you work. You’re going to fail.
Hustle, but make sure you’re hustling in the right direction.
3. Don’t be blinded by passion. Here’s another recurring theme on the show: the overly-passionate entrepreneur who’s poured their heart and soul into their product and is absolutely convinced that their business is the next big thing/will change the world…even though everyone else can plainly see that their idea is an utter dud.

“I think passion is overrated. Everyone has a lot of passions. I have a passion for sports – a passion for music. That doesn’t make it a business, and that doesn’t make you qualified to run the business.” –Mark Cuban

It’s hard to knock these folks. Their passion and emotion is well-intended and is frankly admirable in our day of “overwhelming meh” aloofness. Ideally, you should love doing the thing you’re trying to make money at. But passion isn’t enough. Just like hustling can’t transform a sow’s ear into a purse, if nobody wants your product or service, passion in spades won’t magically turn your business into a success. In fact, that unchecked passion can blind you to warning signs that you’re on a sinking ship — before you know it, you’ve invested years of your life and thousands of dollars into an emotionally and financially costly failure. It’s truly sad when the entrepreneurs on the show admit they’ve taken out a second mortgage or emptied their children’s college fund to pursue a dream that all the sharks end up turning down. Had they led with their head instead of their heart, such a devastating anagnorisis could have been avoided.
4. Just because your friends and family love your idea, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen people pitch what is obviously a stinker of a business, only to be stunned when Mr. Wonderful declares, “This is insanity! I forbid you to continue!” How do these incredulous would-be entrepreneurs invariably respond? “But all my friends and family think it’s a great idea!”
Of course they do. They’re your friends and family. They think you’re awesome, so they think everything you do is awesome; it’s the halo effect! Even if your friends and family do realize your business idea is a bad one, they probably wouldn’t say so. They’re worried you’ll shoot the messenger and so they’ll simply tell you what you want to hear.
Take the husband/wife creators of  “Elephant Chat.” They invested $100,000 of their own money into developing their product – a little plush elephant stuffed inside an acrylic “communication cube” that a spouse could place out on the counter to let their partner know they wanted to talk about an issue in the relationship (“the elephant in the room”). It retailed for $60. They swore everyone they talked to thought it was an amazing idea. None of the sharks took the bait.
Besides being blinded by your passion, beware the family and friends filter. Always, always get an outside, unbiased opinion. Better yet, test out your idea on the unforgiving public to see if there’s even a demand for it.
5. Know your business. Above we mentioned that in order to pitch effectively, you gotta know your business. But what does that mean exactly?

“Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world.” –Mark Cuban

First, you need to know your numbers — sales, cash flow, debt, margin, and so on. The sharks often hesitate to make a deal with entrepreneurs who don’t know important data points like their customer acquisition cost.
But knowing your business extends far beyond having a handle on your numbers; it requires a deep understanding and grasp of the industry you’re competing in. Lots of entrepreneurs come on the show pitching a product or service they think is truly unique, only to be informed by one of the sharks that a very similar product or service already exists. If they had done just a bit of due diligence, they could have avoided that embarrassing “surprise.”
There are also plenty of entrepreneurs who come on the show with dreams of conquering certain industries (food, clothing, apps, etc.), but have no idea how those industries actually work; for example, they have a food item they want national grocery stores to stock, yet they aren’t aware of the huge amounts of money big corporations spend to secure that shelf space and what an uphill battle breaking into the market will require. Consequently, their plans to succeed are naive at best — completely misguided at worst.
A perfect example of entrepreneurs who came on Shark Tank without really understanding their industry (or even business) was a pair of doctors pitching a social network for their fellow MDs called Rolodoc. The docs had no clue how social media worked, or even what it was, despite the fact that their business idea would supposedly revolve round it. Consequently, they stumbled over even very basic questions about how their idea would be executed and how it would actually make money. Mark Cuban called it the worst pitch in Shark Tank history.
Before you start your business, research the heck out of the industry you’ll be competing in by reading industry journals and blogs and talking to folks who are already doing business in that market. Heck, even pick up a Dummies guide – there’s one for just about any industry you can think of. This research phase could take months, but it will save you major headaches down the road.
6. Concentrate on your core competency. Sometimes an already successful business will enter the tank seeking more capital to expand and grow. Nothing wrong with that. The problem arises when one of these companies wants to use that money to expand into a somewhat related product line or service that detracts from their original core competency. Most of the sharks are leery of these businesses and will often tell the entrepreneur that they’ll only invest if they drop their plans for the expanded product line. Why would they want their money funneled into an untested product or service instead of being used to boost a proven winner?
It’s good to experiment and try different things in business, but never lose sight of your core competency. Getting sidetracked has been the downfall of many a business. This is especially true with the volume and ease with which you can get feedback on social media these days; you might hear from a bunch of folks who say, “I wish you guys would make this too!” leading you to believe there’s a popular demand for a new expansion in your business. Then it turns out that those commenters actually represented a very small but disproportionately vocal minority.
Know what you’re good at and stick close to it.
7. The best businesses solve real problems. The entrepreneurs that succeed in landing a deal usually have one thing in common: their business solves a real problem. Typically the problem the entrepreneur sets out to solve was one they experienced themselves.
The businesses that typically fail at securing funding don’t solve an actual problem. They’re either novelty products or products that solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. Every now and then you’ll see a shark invest in a novelty item because they see the opportunity to make a lot of money really fast by riding a trend or fad, but for every one of those, you have something like Man Medals – novelty items that are as a dumb as a rock, not the next Pet Rock.
8. If you’re not making money, it’s just a hobby. Kevin O’Leary has a saying, “Any business that after three years isn’t profitable isn’t a business, it’s a hobby.” There’s nothing wrong with hobbies. They’re fun and provide a creative outlet. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that your little manly-scented artisanal soapmaking experiment is a promising biz just because you’ve sold 8 bars on Etsy. If you’re plowing lots of money into your project, but seeing little return on your investment, embrace your endeavor for what it is – a pleasant pastime.
9. Not every business needs investors. Some entrepreneurs come on Shark Tank looking for an investment to expand an already successful business, only to be told by the sharks that they don’t need an investor and should actually continue to bootstrap the business. I think this is an important, but often overlooked point. In a business culture that glorifies million dollar venture capital deals, lots of aspiring entrepreneurs have the mistaken belief that if you want to succeed in business, you have to have investors.
Not so.
Plenty of successful businesses bootstrap their way to success without the assistance of investors; with a good idea, hard work, and proper money and resource management, they’re able to fund continued growth with the cash flow they have coming in. Bringing in an investor wouldn’t do much for these businesses except add another cook in the kitchen – and another hand in the pie.

“Banks are not forgiving, and the last thing you want to do is build your business with a priority placed on having to pay back the bank before you invest further in your business. Equity is far better and sweat equity is the best.” -Mark Cuban

Besides, some businesses just aren’t well suited for investment. Investors typically want businesses that they can scale and aggressively expand. You can’t scale a business that specializes in handcrafted wooden chests made by you, unless of course you’re willing to license your design to a factory in China. But managing the mass-production of wooden chests may not be what you envision as your vocation and you’d rather keep things small – making less money, but staying hands-on with the work.
Taking venture capital ultimately means giving up control. We ourselves have been approached a few times with VC offers but have never seriously considered them. Once you bring in people who are only concerned about the bottom line, they’re going to start pushing you to do things that may not jive with your values and vision. “We need to blow the Art of Manliness up and increase traffic faster! Why don’t you publish more often and do like, oh, I don’t know, some posts on the ‘hot girl of the month?’” Um, no thanks.
Before seeking investment, ask yourself: Do we really need outside funding? Have we reached a point where we can’t continue to grow without it? Are we the type of business an investor would even want to invest in?  If so, what would we do with the extra capital? Do I really want to give up control of my business?
Also, if you’re looking for a great bootstrapping success story, look no farther than our friends at Huckberry. I’m so impressed with their success – they keep growing and growing – and they’ve done it without VC. For an inside look at the benefits and challenges of taking this path, check out this great article on them at 37Signals.
If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, I hope you’ll take all this advice under consideration, or in the words of Mr. Wonderful, “You’re dead to me!”

From Art of Manliness

Older Entrepreneurs: The startup mentality is not bound by age

Influenced by the spectacular success of companies like Facebook, there has been a recent trend to imply that youth is the secret to success for startups, especially in the tech sector.

Two of the factors driving this are perceptions that Venture Capitalists think that older people don’t have the entrepreneurial drive of the young and a series of articles they spawned that promoted the idea. But there was an immediate backlash with perhaps the most public and high profile discussion taking place on Quora .
It is worth noting that to the Silicon Valley crowd, 35 was the age being highlighted as over the hill in entrepreneurial terms! Outside the tech industry the same attitudes also prevail, even if the age at which people are ‘too old’ is somewhat higher.
It turns out that there is research to show that not only do more older people start businesses but also that businesses started by older people are actually more successful on average. A study by the Kauffman Foundation that surveyed 652 US-born CEOs and heads of product development had some interesting results. Specifically:

• The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders was thirty-nine when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five.
• U.S.-born tech founders holding MBA degrees established companies more quickly (in thirteen years) than others. Those with PhDs typically waited twenty-one years to become tech entrepreneurs, and other master's degree holders took less time to start companies than did those with bachelor's degrees (14.7 years and 16.7 years respectively).

Colonel Sanders/Edgy01/Dan Lindsay

It’s not likely that any change in entrepreneurial ability occurs with age. It’s certainly not an issue of having ideas: for example, Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals at age 76. Whitney Johnson in the Harvard Business Review argues that entrepreneurs get better with age. Billionaire Carlos Slim (aged 73), perennially one of the richest people in the world argues that workers in developed economies are in their prime in their 60s. Vivek Wadhwa, well-known technologist and academic argues that ideas come from need, understanding of need comes with experience and experience comes with age . Other factors like aversion to risk clearly change with age but also with experience of economic issues. This American Express OPEN Survey looked at factors driving entrepreneurship across age groups and shows shifts over time in risk aversion as well as passion.
None of this information should really be a surprise. The reality is that some people have an entrepreneurial drive that is inherent. Some develop it over time and some are forced to it by necessity. And experience clearly helps success. An interesting study by the Founder Institute found that up to approximately the age of 40, businesses were more likely to succeed as their founders age increased, but that this improvement plateaued at 40.
Need more evidence? Here are nine-and-a-half entrepreneurs who started their businesses aged over 60 and have had great success.
Lynne Brooks (age at startup: 60)
Lynne Brooks won the Later-Life Story Contest at the Center for Productive Longevity with her story about quitting a job she didn’t like at age 59 and then getting laid off from a new job less than a year later. So she set up her own non-profit business, Big Apple Greeter, in 1992 as a ‘Welcome Visitor’ program for New York.
Ray Corkran (age at startup: 60)
Ray Corkran decided to enter the field of Elder Care partly because of an incident in his own family. But he did it at age 60 when he bought the Home Instead franchise. citing uncertainty over Medicare and Medicaid and baby boomers hitting 65 as reasons to be optimistic about the financials. And, worst case scenario, now he’s got a place to hang his hat in 20 years, if it comes to that.
Wally Blume (age at startup: 62)
Blume spent over 20 years in the dairy business, and then he spent a few years creating an ice cream business with some partners. It eventually had a big hit flavor and Blume decided to go it alone and mortgaged his house to buy out his partners and start Denali Flavors. The company has eventually had over $85 million in annual sales.
Mary Tennyson (age at startup: 63)
Mary Tennyson came up with her idea after her 92-year-old mother stumbled, fell and broke her hip. Her mother, (still active even when using a walker) had trouble carrying a bag. So Mary came up with the idea of a pocketbook that attaches to a walker. The successful StashAll was the result.
Gail Dunn (age at startup: 64)
Gail Dunn had years of experience working on cars when she decided to set up a business to help women and others struggling with dealing with the automobile industry. So at 64 she set up the Women’s Automotive Connection to provide automotive advice and service as well as lots of advice. They run automotive boot camps and more.
Harlan Sanders (age at startup: 65)


Perhaps better known by his formal address, Colonel Sanders is essentially a household name as the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. After a military career as well as several failed previous ventures, he took his first social security check and founded the famous franchise which he eventually sold in 1964.
Lisa Gable (age at startup: 70)
At an age when many have retired, Lisa Gable got tired of an annoyance and invented a new kind of bra strap, the Strap-Mate which receives wide distribution and is still available today. She was still running the company at age 85!
Art Koff (age at startup: 72)
Art retired at 65, like many people, but couldn’t face not working and knew that lots of other older people were in the same boat. So he started a job board for older people called Retired Brains in 2003. Ten years later it is still going strong – and so is he.
Jeanne Dowell (age at startup: 80)
Jeanne Dowell spent over 40 years teaching yoga, including a stint under the US Olympic Committee. Then in 2008 she founded Green Buddha clothing, with her daughter, Dana Dowell Windatt, with the goal of inspiring Gratitude. The company exemplifies that by giving a percentage of its profits to charity.
That’s nine. But what about the half? This article started out with the tech industry and a strong propensity in that industry to look to youth. And there is a strong tech entrepreneur who started a VERY successful company aged over 60. But he did also start a hugely successful company prior to that when he was a ‘young’ 46 years-old.
David Duffield (age at startup: 46 or 64)

David Duffield

Duffield was one of the founders of Peoplesoft – a hugely successful enterprise software company that was eventually acquired by Oracle. After the acquisition he went on to found Workday – another enterprise software company that looks set to be just as successful – and he founded that at age 64.
It is clear that age is not a real factor in startup success. Good ideas, passion, commitment, energy and experience all are. Some advice to the VC community – pay a bit more attention to experience and a bit less to youth.

From Yahoo