On Internet Business

Entrepreneurs’ Organization Forum meetings

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

In May I will be taking over the presidency of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in the UK. Stepping into this role is exciting and has caused me to reflect on the benefits that entrepreneurs obtain from working with EO, notably the peer-to-peer support and expertise of Forum.

What is Forum?

It’s a confidential peer support system that allows individual entrepreneurs both to present challenges and issues that confront them to the group, and to comment on the challenges and issues being face by others, by sharing relevant personal experiences.

What makes it different to a normal discussion?

First, there’s a one day training programme to help entrepreneurs learn to talk about taboo subjects ranging from marital strife to annual profit. This training gives entrepreneurs a chance to explore what good communication is, how a safe environment for sharing sensitive information works, and what their responsibilities are for maintaining integrity and confidentiality.

Then the three key principles come into play at each meeting. They are confidentiality, personal responsibility, and gestalt language protocol. This means:

1. Everything said in forum is ultra-private.
2. That members are reminded that they only get out what they put in – so not only do they have to assist others by sharing their experience where they can, but they also have the personal responsibility of taking back any lessons they learn from the experience of others and putting those lessons into practice.
3. That giving advice is forbidden – only sharing experience is allowed. This is crucial to the development of entrepreneurs and their businesses because it gives priority to personal insight rather than to offering advice – it makes the recipient of the experience wholly responsible for turning it into action, and it means they have nobody to blame for ‘bad advice’ if it doesn’t work out as they anticipated it would.

Each of the monthly sessions focuses on an issue presented by one member, which he or she would like the others to help him or her resolve. After a presentation of the issue, which can last up to twenty minutes, those around the table with the presenter are given three minutes each to ask questions that clarify the problem and illuminate the wider context within which the problem, and the entrepreneur, operate. This, in itself, helps the presenter learn about the problem they’ve identified and whether they have framed it correctly. Then discussion is based entirely on the personal experiences those around the table have had with that issue.

What are the benefits of Forum participation?

• Personal responsibility is enhanced, while new ideas are made available in a safe environment for sharing sensitive information
• The ability to learn from the experiences of others without having to follow any kind of prescriptive course
• Many Forum members feel that by sharing their own experiences they help others avoid or transcend problem issues, so they are ‘giving back’ to the entrepreneur community.

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Entrepreneurs’ Organization Benefits

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

Membership of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization brings a wide range of benefits from local chapter support for your business through to healthcare and counselling through a partnership with the Healthnetwork Foundation, and customised learning programmes from some of the world’s top business schools.

However, one of the less used, but highly valuable EO benefits is the Regus Gold card – it allows Entrepreneurs’ Organization members to use purpose-built business lounges right across the globe.

Access to a business-focused workspace that’s conveniently located is vital when you’re working away from home – it gives you a professional and efficient hub from which to operate, and the support of proper systems and facilities that make it almost as if you were still at your desk or in your boardroom in your own office.

I recently spent the afternoon working from Regus Berkeley Square and it was a fantastic experience. Not only does the Berkeley Square Regus offer a superb Mayfair location, it provided me with a comfortable seat, plenty of power sockets, complimentary tea, coffee and water and friendly professional service, but also purpose built space with good light.

EO members can sign up here – and obtain access to specially designed lounges in: Berkeley Square, Wood Street, London Bridge, Monument and St James’s in London; Victoria, Brindley Place, Fort Dunlop and Blythe Valley, Birmingham; Manchester Business Park and Manchester Peter House; Sunderland; Gateshead; Leeds; Reading; and Portsmouth.

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UK entrepreneurs confident about the future

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Image courtesy of James Cridland

Despite the challenging tax and regulatory environment, entrepreneurs expect this year to be good for business, with many expecting both profitability and revenue to rise.

A recent roundtable, involving some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs, cast light on a survey conducted by Investec Specialist Private Bank and the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. The roundtable, organised by realbusiness a leading resource for entrepreneurs and small businesses, cast light on the responses of the UK’s entrepreneurs to the current business climate.

While the survey revealed that almost 90% of entrepreneurs expect to increase business revenues this year, there are still areas where the UK does not support its entrepreneurs as well as they might hope.

The survey showed that 83% of entrepreneurs are assuming that the UK economy will not get worse over the coming 12 months while 63% believe it will actually improve.

More impressively, 89% think their business revenues will increase, compared to the 4% who predict a revenue drop.

Peter Selkirk, Chief Executive of Egbert H Taylor and Company, Britain’s largest manufacturer of commercial waste and recycling containers pointed out that, ‘The survey tells you as much about Britain’s entrepreneurs as anything else’ While Bill Laio, co-founder of social network Xing.com and CEO of Finaxis AG said that, ‘The UK could gain from a better awareness of the benefits that entrepreneurs bring. Entrepreneurialism is good for everyone.’

It’s true that adverse economic conditions often bring entrepreneurship to the fore, leading to the establishment of new businesses and the exploration of new ways of doing business. 72% of those responding to the survey said that the current state of the economy could bring them new opportunities.

However, the downside is that the tax and administrative regimes in the UK are seen as a brake, limiting innovation and business grown as far as entrepreneurs are concerned. Less than half of those surveyed 46% were investing in innovation and 10% were actively considering relocation their business operations off-shore.

I expressed the view that there was an entrepreneurship risk for the UK, ‘If measures aren’t taken to encourage people to stay, there are so many other places which are more attractive. Technology has made it so much easier to run a business from anywhere in the world.’ Bill Liao agreed, saying ‘punitive tax policies and short-term thinking are hurting the UK’.

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CrowdSPRING: choice-driven creative marketplace?

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

There are many sites that allow creatives to bid for work, so what makes crowdSPRING different to say, Guru?

Two things:

1. Rather that offering evidence of past project work, creatives can actually engage with the brief and submit their design, meaning the buyer gets more relevant results to choose from – this is better for the employer as it shortens the time-frame and weeds out those who aren’t in tune with the brief, but it also benefits the bidder in terms of allowing those who don’t have a great portfolio to still submit work.

2. Intellectual property rights are protected, to a reasonable extent, through the upload process. This means projects are protected under a legal contract and the seller retains all rights until payment is received, which is no more than you’d expect of a company where one of the partners was an international lawyer, but it’s a confidence booster for creatives who’ve been burned in bid processes in the past.

The big difference is that with crowdSPRING the buyer indicates how much they are willing to spend and there’s no down-bidding until the cheapest bid wins – instead designs and concepts are uploaded and can be debated in the community area until the project closes when the buyer chooses a winner, and pays for it.

There are potential downsides to crowdSPRING – some users have said that they received work of low quality: the ‘guarantee’ of seeing 25 designs (or your money back!) appears to have ended up, in some cases, as producing as few as three designs, but shown in different colourways. There have also been concerns that bidders might not get paid, but this early teething problem seems to have been overcome by the buyer having to forward a percentage of the bid amount to crowdSPRING in advance of the project being aired. This means that if the buyer drops out or doesn’t choose any of the concepts that have been presented, they default the money they’ve already forwarded which will then be shared between bidders.

For buyers, the ideal route is to spend some time on the site, looking at what results from each brief, as this is likely to give them a good sense of how to achieve what they want from the process.

For bidders, the community area is a great place to hone skills and engage in discussion of the posted designs, which can lead to a better understanding of this kind of marketplace and what makes a winning brand design.

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Recruiting for Entrepreneurs

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources

It’s been estimated that small businesses spend around £69 million a year in the UK just on advertising, interviewing, induction and training new staff.

Small businesses, especially those that are entrepreneurial, also need to attract and retain high quality talent. But small enterprises often run into the problem of identifying suitably qualified and dedicated staff members because larger businesses outperform them in most forms of recruitment most notably on-campus events, word-of mouth referral and talent identification. In addition, larger companies offer stability, security and clear career progression.

So what can small businesses do to compete?

First, using human resources sites such as Monster and Careerbuilder can level the field on many standard areas of recruiting, although they won’t necessarily produce candidates for highly specialised positions.

Using your website as a recruitment tool is also a good way to identify talent in your industry – it’s a form of marketing that delivers the best results when combined with social media outreach to inform the likely candidate base about your company and the work ethos that you offer.

Start-up businesses may not be able to take advantage of career fairs at schools and colleges, but can benefit from taking part in structured curriculum-based information sharing such as giving talks on emerging technologies and fields of employment, this has worked well for the games and multi-media industries in particular. Offer your services as a speaker to local colleges who are training people who might become your employees – you can also offer an internship or work experience opportunity which is a good way of finding people who may later become employees.

Always be aware that the expense of hiring the wrong person is greater than the cost of recruiting the right one, and use techniques such as psychometric testing, effective interview techniques, and considering the personality fit that a candidate requires to work well in your organisation.

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Business Planning Resources round-up

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources

While there are many tools and information sources online, picking good resources to investigate your business potential can be make or break – here are some of our top picks:

Researching a new business

Scavenger gives you online access to hundreds of reports and guides relating to almost every kind of business from coffee shops to creative industries. You can use the scavenger site to find case studies and to explore what training you might need to succeed, what your customer base will look like and who the competition will be – it’s not free but the reports are affordable and it’s better to pay in advance to find out the facts than to pay with business failure by not knowing what you were up against.

Writing a business plan

A key to succeeding in business is having an accurate and informative business plan that will give you new business clear direction and ensure your spend your set-up time doing the right things. It’s vital to invest effort ensuring it’s strategically perfect. The Business Link website has comprehensive information on who a business plan should be aimed at, what it should contain and how to gather the information you need, as well as showing you how to lay it out.

Do the math

Bplan has a range of calculators that you can use for free, such as their cash-flow and break-even calculators and their start-up-costs estimator which tells you your likely capital start cost. There are also sample business plans to look at and some can be downloaded for free.

Investment angles and angels

If your start-up costs exceed your finance, or if your business is likely to need early investment of capital or expertise, Angel Deals is a virtual global network for the business community. It links entrepreneurs seeking funding and growth with investors seeking deal flow and people seeking work. It’s a one stop resource for every kind of investment.

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Business books to read in 2010

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Here’s a round-up of some of the best business books I’ve read in recent months – there’s something here for every entrepreneur:

Great Game of Business, author J. Stack – When first published in 1992 this book contained the seminal ‘The Higher Laws of Business’

1. You get what you give.
2. It’s easy to stop one guy, but it’s pretty hard to stop 100.
3. What goes around comes around.
4. You do what you gotta do.
5. You gotta wanna.
6. You can sometimes fool the fans, but you can never fool the players.
7. When you raise the bottom, the top rises.
8. When people set their own targets, they usually hit them.
9. If nobody pays attention, people stop caring.
10. As they say in Missouri: Shit rolls downhill. In other words, change begins at the top.

To which Stack adds ‘The Ultimate Higher Law’ = when you appeal to the highest level of thinking, you get the highest level of performance.

This book is ideal for businesses focused on teamwork as it contains insightful information on how to get individuals focused and working together to achieve business success.

E-myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber – In an almost opposite way to the previous book, this one aims to fix the work life/balance for the entrepreneur.

Gerber feels that almost everyone who launches a business is a technician and will sooner or later suffer from Entrepreneurship seizure – the E-myth. He says small businesses do not work out because the technician-founder is working IN rather than ON the business, in other words is managing the mechanics rather than the strategy. Gerber takes the reader through installing systems in the business so that anybody can run it. The systems, not the individuals run the business. McDonalds is the key example here – with a constant workforce turnover, it still operates effectively because the systems keep the business going, not the people.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers – author Geoffrey A Moore – This is a little more specialised, but it’s a book that reveals how high-tech products require marketing strategies completely different to those used in other industries. Moore offers ‘chasm theory’ which shows why high-technology products initially sell well to a technically literate customer base, but then hit a lull (the chasm) as they endeavour to cross over to mainstream buyers. But the book isn’t merely descriptive, it offers solutions to the problem by showing how to cross the chasm by getting marketing professionals to create profiles and target specific sections of the population rather than aiming straight for mainstream success, and uses examples such as Apple, Oracle, and Sun to elaborate the theory.

Winning: The Ultimate Business How-To Book by Jack and Suzy Welch – Jack Welch’s personal life is perhaps nothing to boast about in terms of work/life balance, but he does offer some of the most simple, powerful and proven management practices in the business today. His message is simple and clear if you: empower others, ask questions, tap into the potential of all of your associates, choose integrity and honesty over charts, graphs, and politics, and spend more time in action than slaving over budgets, you’ll achieve entrepreneurial success. One of the best sections of this book is the list of questions that need to be answered to develop a winning strategy – another real take-way gem is the material on how to take the pain out of agreeing budgets.

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Touchnote – personalising the card industry

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources, Uncategorized

Recently I posted about Moo cards, and here’s another simple, effective idea that brings the mass-produced greetings card into the 21st century.

Touchnote is a new concept that uses digital photographs to create cards that you can quickly and easily personalise. The cards you create are then mailed out to your chosen recipients.

The system couldn’t be simpler to use, either you upload your own digital photo to the Touchnote site, or use a photo already hosted on Facebook, or pick one from their extensive gallery. Then add a personal message. Touchnote will print and post the card for you, to anywhere in the world. You can even choose to send postcards rather than greetings cards!

Not only is it a great system for the occasions we all want to send cards for: birthday cards, party invites, seasonal greetings – but it’s also a fantastic way to celebrate a one-off event swiftly, so if you have something to commemorate or celebrate you can upload a photo of the occasion and have the cards ready to wing out within a few minutes.

There are other advantages:

1. The cards cost from as little as £1.99 for 1-4 personalised cards, 5-9 personalised cards cost just £1.75 and prices descend according to the number you order, dropping to only 99 pence if you purchase 25 or more. Bearing in mind that a stamp for such a card would cost a minimum of 45 pence alone, plus the cost of the card, the time it took you to choose it, queue up to buy it, then the time to fill it in and take it to a postbox, this could actually be the cheapest, as well as the most personal and thoughtful, way to keep in touch with people.
2. Because Touchnote uses unlaminated and recyclable paper which is 75% from recycled sources and 25% from workshop off-cuts, all Forestry Stewardship Council)Chain of Custody certified, you can feel confident that it’s been responsibly sourced.
3. Touchnote is also working with ‘Excellent Development’, an environmental organisation that ensures Touchnote minimises its impact on the environment.

There’s an iPhone app, of course, so you can send cards when you’re on the move, and it’s a lot more fun than browsing a shop for something close to what you want, when you can sit in comfort and create exactly what you had in mind!

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What is the best Microsoft PowerPoint alternative?

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

Perhaps the best looking, and most intuitive alternative I’ve seen is Prezi, a completely new way of creating presentations.

How Prezi works

It’s a Flash-based tool, which allows for visualisation and storytelling, rather than PowerPoint’s strictly linear presentation system.

There’s a simple editing system that inserts images and text, video, Flash files and allows the user to draw lines to show the relationships between each item. This gives a ‘visual map’ something like a mind map which can be zoomed in and out of, and navigated by clicking into content displayed.

Learn more about Prezi

How to use it

Because it’s designed in Flash, it’s an easy application to use, once you get the hang of the basic concept of a map rather than individual slides. This learning curve can be eased if you use the online video help which shows you how to do some of the more complex actions such as positioning and resizing objects using Zebra.

What it costs

Prezi has three pricing structures: Free, Enjoy (around £37 per year), and Pro (around £108 per year). The difference comes in storage space on one hand, Free has 100 MB of storage on the Prezi site, Enjoy has 500 MB and Pro has 2000 MB, and in privacy on the other – Enjoy and Pro both let you you’re your presentations private and Pro gives you a downloadable desktop softward setup, while Free and Enjoy require you to design online by uploading your content to the server.

Why use it?

Prezi looks fabulous; it’s a much more stylish way of sharing information and it allows each information user to navigate the content in their own way, so it’s much more exciting both to create and to share.

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Best Custom Business Card Site

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

I just love this site! To me it shows how ordering business cards can be turned into a fun experience. The Moo experience offers:

• Smart and well laid out website
• Simply to use customisation process with a full preview
• Value added features like unusual and stylish pre-designed templates.
• Easy ordering

But it’s not just about good business cards – the ability to customise cards to this extent allows all businesses to be innovative about how they present themselves and to personalise their approach to the marketplace. This month I’ve already seen people using these small cards as inserts for handmade Christmas crackers to be given to customers and as speed-dating tools at a business networking event: in that case the tiny cards were put under wineglasses and those attending played wine-glass bingo – they matched up the cards with a bingo sheet and when they had a ‘line’ of other business people they’d spoken to they got a prize like an hour’s free consultancy with a business banker or some blank stationery to personalise.

Brilliant tools allow entrepreneurs to demonstrate their own brilliance and to support their business growth in a wide variety of ways, and that’s good for everybody.

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