Sam Davidson of CoolPeopleCare sent me a link to a blog post that offers “10 Morning Rituals For The Healthy Entrepreneur“. While these can feel a bit hokey at first, it is important to engage in this type of routine. It can be a key element for creating temperance in our lives. Work can so easily become all consuming, especially for the entrepreneur.
Reading this reminds me of the routines that I value that I have let slip a bit lately….
– Quiet reflection or prayer sitting on my back porch early in the morning with my first cup of hot coffee.
– Taking my daily walk with my wife (and our dogs, of course).
– Attending morning mass on the way to work.
Lent is right around the corner. I think I will commit to bringing these things back into my daily routine rather than try to find something to “give up” for Lent.
Calling All “Edisons”
Everyday Edisons, a PBS reality series chronicling modern inventors and the development of their inventions, announces its 2008 casting call schedule to be held in major cities throughout the nation in search of Season Three participants. The show considers all categories of invention, ranging from sketched ideas and simple concepts to detailed, patented designs and factory prototypes.
The Everyday Edisons panel of judges, including product development and patent law experts, will provide a forum for participants to present and demonstrate original ideas. The judges will select 10 to 12 inventors to be featured in the third season of Everyday Edisons, which chronicles the inventors as their concept is refined, produced, marketed and sold.
The remaining Everyday Edisons 2008 casting call schedule includes:
– SAN JOSE – February 16
– DALLAS – March 15
– CHICAGO – April 19
– NORTHEAST LOCATION TBA – May 17
Participants with factory prototypes or finished products will be reviewed by the judging panel, as well as representatives from major retailers, including Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, QVC, PetSmart, Staples, The Sharper Image and buybuyBABY. Previous inventions featured on Everyday Edisons range from a convertible baby bag and kitchenware product to a family board game and construction tool.
Interested? Go to their web site here for more details.
Belmont Entrepreneurs Celebrate
Just thought I would share a picture of a few of our students celebrating our recent National Model Program award from USASBE. They are all sporting new “I’m a Belmont Entrepreneur” tee shirts.
Viral Marketing
The ideablob.com team talked to one of our classes about viral marketing.
Just like “word of mouth”, viral marketing doesn’t just “happen.” It is an intentional strategy. Viral marketing campaigns work, according to Ami Kassar from ideablob.com, because of two things.
First, you need a hook. People need a reason to spread the word about your business. With ideablob.com the main hook was the prize that people could win for the best idea. It is also a cool site to play with.
Second, you need to tap into the need that people have to connect with one another. For ideablob they found a way to help entrepreneurs connect with each other. Entrepreneurship can be quite a lonely pursuit.
Viral marketing never just happens — it must be intentional and must resonate with your customers.
The Wisdom of Counsel
In the discussions between our Belmont entrepreneurs and the ideablob.com team last evening, the topic centered on the value of getting multiple perspectives when facing a decision — of seeking wise counsel from people with experience and expertise. Seeking counsel is one of the practices that Mike Naughton and I talk about in relation to the virtue of prudence in our book about being a good entrepreneur titled Bringing Your Business to Life (due out later this spring). Prudent entrepreneurs are good stewards of the resources available to them for their businesses, including investment and other start-up capital, employees’ labor, customer trust, and so forth.
Seeking counsel is never more is never more important than when considering whether to launch a new business and how to best position it for market entry. Aspiring entrepreneurs should not seek out only those who act as cheerleaders to their dreams. Find people with expertise and experience who are willing to bluntly tell you the flaws and weaknesses in your plans. My students call this being “Cornwalled” when I offer my honest assessment of their ideas and plans. I always encourage them to seek more perspectives than mine. More than once I have failed to see the wisdom of a new business idea!
One of the things I like about ideablob.com is that it is creating a forum that dramatically widens your circle of people who can offer counsel on new ideas. Many of the people who frequent the site are passionate about entrepreneurship.
Seek wise counsel on your ideas from several people with different backgrounds. Listen to their counsel — never argue. Reflect on all of what you here and look for common threads that you can use to make your idea stronger. It will improve the odds that your idea is really a good business opportunity, that you will position it properly when you launch, and that you will realize the success that you dream of.
ideablob.com Team at Belmont
The ideablob.com team is here at Belmont tonight and all day tomorrow.
They are hosting a get together at Bongo Java this evening and will be speaking in our classes all day tomorrow. If you’re in Nashville come on over to Bongo Java tonight!
I’ll blog more on their visit tomorrow….
Entrepreneurship on Steroids
There is a growing perception that American entrepreneurship is simply about getting rich no matter how it is done and no matter what the costs. I call this “entrepreneurship on steroids.”
Watch this short YouTube video about an English entrepreneur and listen carefully to what he has to say about American entrepreneurs toward the very end of the clip.
Wealth is a good thing. It can create good outcomes for the entrepreneur, his employees, his investors, his community. But it should never be viewed as the only measure of success. For many entrepreneurs it is not even the main yardstick they use to measure their success.
What we don’t need in the world is a bunch of narcissistic, one-dimensional, entrepreneurs “on steroids.”
(Thanks to Jeff Williams for passing this clip along).
Failure Stinks!
Barry Moltz’s long awaited second book, titled Bounce, has finally arrived. From his website:
Conventional business wisdom tells us that there is always something to learn from failure. Not true–sometimes it just stinks! Failure that offers no real learning value becomes a big jolt to the basic business belief system.
Barry’s gift is that he uses humor to offer lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn from. During his last visit to Belmont, Barry offered some glimpses of what he planned to explore in his new book. Just like with his first book You Need to be a Little Crazy, this book is a must read for entrepreneurs at any stage of their development.
Barry demonstrates that developing the resiliency to ‘bounce” through these cycles determines who ultimately will succeed. Using real life business examples, he shows that with true business confidence, we can face our fears, let go of shame and failures, use all our choices, be better risk-takers, and define our own brand of success.
Barry offers advice on how to use the potholes, detours, and wrong turns along the road that is our our entrepreneurial journey to reach our ultimate goal of entrepreneurial success.
Insights into Global Entrepreneurship
The Global Small Business Blog has a Q&A with Elaine Allen of Babson College who is the research director of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (they publish regular surveys on entrepreneurship featured in this blog). Here is a sample of her comments in this insightful interview:
Reasons for the US continuing high rate of entrepreneurship can be partly explained by cultural values but economically it probably has to do with some of the lowest levels of perceived ‘red tape’ involved in starting a business and also the lower cost involved in starting a business in the US compared to other high-income countries.
Incubating and Hatching College Entrepreneurs
Smart Money has a feature by Diana Ransom on the growing trend of creating incubators and hatcheries on college campuses to help attract and support student entrepreneurs. The article highlights several programs, including ours here at Belmont:
Three years ago, Andy Tabar, then an 18-year-old college freshman at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., started up the first iteration of his web-development company, Bizooki, with less than $1,000 and a little bit of know-how.
To help get his business off the ground, Tabar applied for membership to the university’s “hatchery” called the Practicing Student Entrepreneur Program. Through the hatchery, which began in 2004, http://www.ativan777.com Tabar and about 70 of his fellow fledgling entrepreneurs have access to desks, computers, phones, fax machines and copiers. Students can bounce business ideas off of seasoned entrepreneurs in residence at the university, as well as seek out free marketing advice and accounting help.
Students also can apply for need-based seed funding or vie for larger sums through an annual business plan competition. Tabar garnered a $5,000 award in his freshman year but says “the amount of consulting and support that I’m getting from these people is just as valuable as any financial support that I’m getting.”
Belmont’s newest student business Hatchery.