Tag Archives: entrepreneurs

5 Ways To Stay Motivated as an Entrepreneur

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Here are five tips to stay motivated from a Meetup called Bootstrappers Breakfast, a group that fosters early morning entrepreneur discussions. There were ten of us in the Zoom chat the other day: We all participated equally with the discussion led by Sean Murphy.

The challenge as stated was how do you motivate yourself to pursue new clients when you are busy serving old ones? It’s like networking for your next job when you are happily employed. That activity often falls by the wayside.

Here’s what participants had to say.

First, to stay motivated stay organized. Make a task list. One person put his in a Trello board. Another swore by his e-calendar and put all to-dos there. 

The second tip had to do with networking goals. Set up a weekly goal each week, e.g five meetings. Additionally aim to keep catch-up chats to 20 minutes. Super busy people will be more likely to say, “Yes” to 20 minutes instead of an hour.

The third piece of advice was to find a work buddy. Set up a Zoom chat and work together with your friend. State what you are trying to get done and they can ask, how is it going? 

The fourth tip is to attend a peer accountability Meetup. The one the Bootstrap Breakfast participant said he goes to regularly is for entrepreneurs. This reminded me of my book writing class at Stanford. We reported our progress to the instructors and classmates each week. I did finish my book draft by the way.

Tip number five is about reading books on developing good habits. The two recommended were Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and Atomic Habits by James Clear. If a habit to spend a certain amount of time each week drumming up new business is formed then there is a much higher chance that goal is achieved.

In summary, find your own personal formula for staying motivated to look for new business even when you have clients. Then you’ll have way less downtime as a consultant or entrepreneur.

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Michelle McIntyre who wrote this story is the founder of Michelle McIntyre Communications LLC. An award-winning IBM vet and social media microinfluencer, she invites you to follower her on Twitter @FromMichelle

Premium Business Advice from the Founder of Buzzfeed

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By Michelle McIntyre

Earlier this week I heard a talk by Jonah Peretti, CEO and founder of entertainment and news website Buzzfeed, which has 200 million unique visitors monthly.

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To put this in perspective, Business Insider, which is no slouch, has 15.9 million and Time.com has 8.9 million.

A graduate of MIT Media Lab, Peretti lives in Brooklyn, NY, and was interviewed on stage by investor Chris Dixon at a Commonwealth Club INFORUM meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

As if he didn’t already have enough cool things to put on his LinkedIn profile, Peretti also co-founded Huffington Post.

Buzzfeed is known for its list format stories like The 40 Greatest Dog GIFs of All Time and quizzes like “Which 90s Toy Are You?” Its staff of 800 includes serious journalists who cover a variety of news from global terrorist threats to politics.

Because its stories are regularly shared millions of times, founder Jonah Peretti is fast becoming known as the master of virality.

Although Buzzfeed is sometimes criticized by more traditional people for its “fluffy” journalism (no pun intended), the business model works.

Here are some of Jonah Peretti’s more interesting comments and pieces of advice from the event in the areas of content marketing and entrepreneurship.

1. We optimize for content shares at Buzzfeed. You won’t click on a story to find out it is a trick. Another site might imply in the headline that two celebrities are dating, but when you click through to the story, you find out it’s not true.

2. We don’t look down on the business and advertising side of things. While the groups here are independent, they also respect one another.

3. When it comes to creating ads, we embrace innovation.

4. Regarding the popularity of video, he joked, “We are headed back to a preliterate society where soon no one will use words.”

5. Sometimes you have to be indifferent to business to serve the consumer.

6. When determining what content to run, we ask, will it change lives? Will it change laws? On a human level, we ask, does this have meaning?

7. One of the hardest and most important things is to build a great team. Startups need people with shared values and who also want to go after something big.

8. How do I attract talent? I let people do their best work and be more productive than they would be somewhere else.

9. Set up small groups of people each with a lot of autonomy. Let them build things inside of a company.

Jonah Peretti was asked what he thought of the Buzzfeed parodies, for example on Click-hole. “If it’s a parody and funny, I love it. At Buzzfeed we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

[The photo of Jonah Peretti on stage in San Francisco, Calif., was taken by Michelle McIntyre.]

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Crowdfunding Secrets Indiegogo and Kickstarter May not Divulge

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By Michelle McIntyre

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I recently met an entrepreneur named Kitae Kwon who had raised $84,000 three years ago on Kickstarter for his unique docking station called Landing Zone.

This is pretty amazing considering the average amount raised is around $5,000.

There are some other exceptions.

Scanadu, maker of the super cool Scandadu Scout personal health monitoring device, raised more than $1.6 million using Indiegogo.

If you are not that familiar with the concept, here is the definition:
Crowd funding or crowdfunding (alternately crowd financing, equity crowdfunding, or hyper funding) describes the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their resources, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Crowd funding is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, citizen journalism, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, movie or free software development, and scientific research. (Source: Mashable.com)

From a technology perspective, usually people who sign up to use the crowdfunding services of say a Kickstarter or Indiegogo ask for monetary donations, not for equity in the company, and in return, send donors a gift. It’s usually their product.

It’s nice because it forces the founder to get his or her marketing act together. This could mean getting professional photos and videos made or simply writing sales messages.

It could also mean a slew of new customers, if the donor gift is in fact the product.

The third benefit is that it’s organized way for friends, families and of course, new contacts to donate to your company.

Crowdfunding typically works better for B2C products by the way. B2B’s should probably just tap angel investor friends directly for funds.
There are some downsides though. Kitae Kwon says watch out for people who make your product look bad by posting terrible reviews which can often be fake. For example, someone posts a negative review before actually receiving the product.

Kwon said they probably come from competitors or random people who just like to write bad reviews.

He added that you have to be strong and confident when crowdfunding. If it doesn’t go as planned, your company could still be successful. Sometimes the campaign was just not planned or executed well.

Additionally, said Kwon, you could have a successful crowdfunding campaign but the product fails.

The net is, says Kwon, don’t let the campaign define your startup’s future.

However, Kwon adds, there are many crowdfunding benefits. For example, when people donate to get your product as a gift, it shows a bigger prospective investor, like a venture capitalist it is in demand.

Since he raised $84,000 for his docking station for the Apple Macbook Air, which is 10 times the average amount raised, Kwon must have had a huge demand.

For more unique crowdfunding examples, check out this story on the website Hooked on Social Networking. For information about Kwon’s company Landing Zone, visit: http://landingzone.net/
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Michelle McIntyre is the president of MMC high tech PR, on the TEDxSanJoseCA executive team, and director of marketing communications for SVIABC. Follow her on Twitter at @FromMichelle  [Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com.]

 

15 Tips to Become a more Effective Entrepreneur

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by Michelle McIntyre

 

Late last year, my Silicon Valley entrepreneur meet-up group gathered for a breakfast networking session. During the event, participants shared answers to two questions posed by Host Sean Murphy.

 

 

 

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He asked, “What have you learned in 2013 that will make you more effective as an entrepreneur in 2014?” He added, “What will you stop doing to make time for it?”

 

There was a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge in the room and I found the 15 tips quite valuable. Here they are.

 

1. Be more patient.
2. Fail faster.
3. Focus early on value proposition, less on technical implementation.
4. Drop less important details.
5. Hire more carefully. Fire faster.
6. Stop coding so much. Spend more time on sales. (Several attendees were software developers.)
7. Delegate more and more effectively.
8. Always build a simpler product than you first dreamed of.
9. Network more. Listen more.
10. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
11. Plan more. It’s really hard to recover wasted hours.
12. Take more time to listen.
13. More focus on time management and effective action.
14. Concentrate on one line of business. Focus for effect.
15. Build on strengths.

 

Thank you, Sean Murphy, for sharing your meeting notes with me for this article.

 

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Michelle McIntyre, a high tech press relations consultant in Saratoga, Calif., is on the executive team of TEDxSanJoseCA and the director of marketing communications for the Silicon Valley International Association of Business Communicators.