Entrepreneurship is a phenomenon that lends itself to metaphors. The experiences can be so overwhelming, so new and so complex that it can be easier sometimes to think about it all using a metaphor. As I?ve written about before, I like to think about the experience in terms of golfing. Others have compared it to marriage, a chess game, or being ping pong ball in a game of table tennis. During the growth period in our business, I often likened the experience to that of the life of heavy weight boxer. There were months of boring preparation and conditioning followed by minutes of adrenalin, rush, and terror when the actual match occurred. Here is a comparison of entrepreneurship to surfing that someone recently shared with me. Whatever your metaphor, it can help create sense out of a life that can at times feel like chaos (yet another metaphor!).
Top 10 Reasons To Love Small Business
WASHINGTON, D.C. ? “Just in time for Valentines Day the Office of Advocacy of the SBA offers the top 10 reasons to love small business, the heart of the American economy.
Top 10 Reasons To Love Small Business
10. Small businesses make up more than 99.7% of all employers.
9. Small businesses create more than 50 percent of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP).
8. Small patenting firms produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.
7. The 22.9 million small businesses in the United States are located in virtually every neighborhood.
6. Small businesses employ about 50 percent of all private sector workers.
5. Home-based businesses account for 53 percent of all small businesses.
4. Small businesses make up 97 percent of exporters and produce 29 percent of all export value.
3. Small businesses with employees start-up at a rate of over 500,000 per year.
2. Four years after start-up, half of all small businesses with employees remain open.
1. The latest figures show that small businesses create 75 percent of the net new jobs in our economy.”
Source: Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)
Positioning versus Branding
At his blog, CRM Mastery E-Journal, Jim Berkowitz discusses the differences between positioning a product in the market versus the ever popular notion of branding. Branding is making customers aware of a product name so they grab that product based on this name awareness. Positioning entails making customers aware of the attributes of your product during the actual decision making process for a purchase. Positioning is usually much less costly and works much more quickly.
Program supporting immigrant entrepreneurs
The National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship has a link to an article in the Washington Post about a new fund that supports first and second generation American entrepreneurs. Hats off to Blue Water Capital for taking the risk of creating this fund (specialized funds like this do not have a stellar track record). If successful, this could be a model for other parts of the country with large groups of entrepreneurial minded immigrants who recognize the power of free enterprise in this country.
Belmont’s Entrepreneurship Program in the News
We are beginning to roll out some of our new programs in entrepreneurship here at Belmont. Here is a link (here is the continution of that article) to one of these programs in which students will be starting and running real retail businesses as part of a living lab. These projects involve students from our art, graphic design, music business and entrepreneurship majors all working together to start and run two new ventures.
Special week
This week my wonderful bride of 25 years celebrates her birthday and my parents celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary. Both of these marriages have made it successfully, although sometimes stressfully, through entrepreneurial careers. I am delighted to report here that traditional marriage and free enterprise are both alive and well!
Franchising with eyes wide open
Franchising is a common entry strategy into the world of entrepreneurship. For many, franchising is a safe a secure first step into business ownership. While for others, as this article from startupjournal.com illustrates, franchising can be an unsatisfying detour down the road to economic independence.
Small Business Ethics and Customer relations
The NFIB site has an article which gives a good overview of the importance of stakeholder relationships for small businesses. The author stresses the importance of building integrity into every relationship a business develops as a critical part of building strong customer trust. A strong reputation takes hard work and time to build with customers. This article gives a nice outline of how small businesses can build a venture on a foundation of integrity.
When they finally caught the car
The Small Business Blog has a link to an excellent article at WSJ.com on the perils that small businesses must plan for when they face explosive and sudden growth.
Stories like this remind me of one of my favorite business parables: There once were two old dogs on a farm that spent their days chasing every car that passed by. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, they chased cars all day long. Then one day they actually caught one. At that moment one of these old dogs turned to the other and said, ?Hey, we finally caught one of these things!! But what the heck do we do now????!!!?
You need to be a little crazy?”retropreneurs”
Q: Barry, as someone who road the dot.com wave I am surprised that you sing the praises of a very old fashioned, indeed some might even say rather boring type of businessperson, namely the merchant. Why the change of perspective?
A: One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I thought the term entrepreneur became too sexy. I like the definition since the French word does mean “To undertake with Complete responsibility”. That covers it! But I think we need to come up with a new word so we can forget about the 1990’s since they are not coming back. I use the word “retropreneur” since I think we have to go back to the way businesses have always been started. Through hard work, passion and and one customer need at a time!