The New “Age” Entrepreneur
The following is a bit of information about todays entrepreneur and the shifting characteristics of those entrepreneurs, specifically, age.
One of the most important things to take from this information is that it’s never too late to take that next step into, not only self employment but also doing something you enjoy and excel at.
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Forget the twentysomethings who dominated the dotcom era: Today, most company founders are between the ages of 55 and 64.
Ashook Sood started his first company at age 54. Seven years later, about the same time many of his former colleagues at Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Tyco were preparing to retire, he founded his second startup.
Sood could retire comfortably today and spend more time with his family, but that’s not in the cards.
“Things are falling into place. We’re just getting started,” said Sood, CEO of Magnolia Solar Inc., a company that develops nanostructured thin-film solar cells. The company in March moved to Albany, New York, from Woburn, Massachusetts.
Sood, 62, is among the growing number of individuals who are forming early-stage businesses later in life.
The 20-to-34 age bracket—once the hottest group for founding early-stage technology companies—has the lowest startup rate, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, a private organization that tracks entrepreneurship.
The number of people ages 55 to 64 who started businesses increased 36 percent in 2008. In all, more than 80 percent of all startups were by people over 40 years of age.
There are a number of reasons for the rise in middle-aged entrepreneurship.
- Recessions such as this one squeeze out higher-wage earners, who typically are the older, more experienced workers. Those individuals tend to have more savings and better access to funds.
- Older individuals might have a better credit history, or they might have money put away
- Diminished retirement portfolios have changed the game.
- Older entrepreneurs are also motivated to venture out on their own as “lifetime employment” with a single company continues to diminish, and the potential for job security becomes less and less likely.
“The United States might be on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom—not in spite of an aging population but because of it,” said Dane Stangler, the senior analyst who wrote the Kauffman study.
Older entrepreneurs bring a level of knowledge and experience that comes from years of working in the corporate world, said Guy Cortesi, CEO of eSolve Solutions Inc. “When you’ve worked for other companies, you understand what works and doesn’t work. You understand limitations and issues—too many meetings, for example—and know how to avoid those issues”.
Read the entire article @ Portfolio.com – Startup Boom
Decline of the Dow: The Silver Lining
The news across every network today screams:
“Stocks buckled Thursday under the growing belief that the global economy is weaker…the Dow Jones industrials briefly traded below 10,000 for the first time in three months.”
Granted, it all sounds very scary and dramatic but what does it mean?
The Dow Jones is an economic indicator. A fairly complex index of 30 publicly traded companies based in the U.S. that measures their trades in the stock market during a single session. Self explanatory right?
As business owners, it’s not the value of this economic indicator that is so important but the cause of the over all change. It’s sometimes hard to read between the lines of these financial reports but that is exactly what needs to happen in order to judge the effects this may have on our business and view that information objectively.
The report continues as follows:
“A flood of bad news, including rising debt levels in European nations and an unexpected jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits, had investors pulling money out of assets like stocks and commodities that look increasingly risky. Fears of more disappointing news Friday, when the government issues its January employment report, contributed to the slide.”
While the Dow is based on U.S. companies, it is known to be influenced by foreign politics and events which accounts for the mention of European debt, but as business owners, our focus should lay on the second subject of unemployment. We’ve all seen the reports about the decrease in new jobs and the increase in unemployment. This has an adverse effect on our current economy, but what does it mean for our businesses?
It means that the market is inundated with skilled and experienced people eager to put their best attributes to work for your business. We all know the difficulties that come with hiring the right people to work in our business and yet, even in these times when companies are receiving hundreds of applications for a single open position, they’re still finding it hard to find the right people.
As business owners, we need to take advantage of this unique climate to better ourselves and our position in this market. Many times we find ourselves so wrapped up in day to day operations that it’s hard to step back and take an objective look at our business to see how we can make it more efficient and profitable. Right now I think one of the most effective things we can do is to develop the policies and procedures of our human resources to maximize the efficiency of our workforce.
Often times wages are a companies largest expense. What are you doing in order to get the most from your employees?
Credit for the quotes and information go to Associated Press Business and Yahoo Finance.
Small Business Owner Asks President Obama About Gov. Health Care
The stories about the legislation in front of Congress concerning the Health Insurance Reform have filled newspapers, television, websites and feed readers across America. Many of these stories contain the same information as previous stories, but some are addressing the question on many business owners minds, “How will this effect MY small business?”
At this point, no one knows. The intricacies of this legislation are being changed and tweaked as needed and the details are ambiguous at best. But, this in no way alleviates the need to know how this will effect businesses and one business owner got the opportunity to seek answers.
Patty Brigulio and President Obama courtesy of Stephen Crowley/NYTimes
Above is a shot of business owner Patty Brigulio and President Obama sharing words over the question she was able to ask at one of the many open forum town hall style meetings that President Obama is holding across the United States to talk about health insurance reform.
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Obama Meets the Businesswoman: The Story Behind the Photo
It turns out The Agenda is not alone in thinking President Obama may have a public relations problem with small business. Patty Briguglio, who can be seen above, and on the front page of today’s Times, exchanging a wagging finger with the President, agrees and she should know: She runs a public relations firm, MMI Associates, in Raleigh, N.C. She’s also a small-business owner.
Ms. Briguglio pays for much of her 19 employees’ health insurance, though she doesn’t offer a group plan. Because her staff is so young, it is cheaper to simply provide an allowance for them to purchase individual policies. The President was in town to talk up health care, and earlier at the town hall event, he called on Ms. Briguglio. She asked, “What current long-term social program created and run by the government should we look to as a model of success and one that we as taxpayers should be confident that a new government-run health care system would be better than the current system in place?”
The President suggested both Medicare and V.A. hospitals, which, he said, “have very high satisfaction rates.” Further, he added, “Medicare costs have gone up more slowly than private sector health care costs.” The answer didn’t fully satisfy Ms. Briguglio. “I’ve never associated any government program with ‘cost-effective’ or ‘efficient,’” she said in an interview today. “I don’t believe that the government will be a better steward of the money that I set aside for health care for my employees than I will be.”
This was only one of several questions she hoped to ask the President. Of even greater concern, she says, is the tax hit she will take. And that’s the story behind the photo. At that moment, as the President made his exit, Ms. Briguglio pressed him on the issue and got a response: “He said to me, ‘The tax credits would more than offset any tax increases,’ ” she recounted. “And I said, ‘I’m holding you to that.’ And he laughed and said, ‘O.K.’ And I said, ‘No, I mean it — I expect you to keep your word on this.’”
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Read the full article by Robb Mandelbaum at NYTimes.com
Marketing Research Can Be Intense
The title says it all, marketing research can be intense. The following article reviews some of the things that Disney marketing analysts are doing in order to find out what programming, both television and online, is currently grabbing the attention of it’s viewers.
While their methods might not be what works for businesses on a smaller scale the driving question behind it stays relevant; what is it our customers respond and react to, in forms of advertising, in today’s market?
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Lab Watches Web Surfers to See Which Ads Work
Like other television companies, Disney Media Networks — which includes ABC, ESPN, ABC Family and Disney XD — has long conducted intense consumer research about its programming. But now, as the Web and DVRs uproot the way people consume television, and thus rip apart the industry’s business model, the unit is adding advertiser research as a fresh focus of intense inquiry.
Disney will unveil some of the lab’s early findings, including some surprises about new forms of online ads, on Tuesday in a presentation to about 200 advertisers in New York.
It is relatively easy for Internet companies and their advertisers to measure precisely how often Web site visitors click on advertisements, and which kinds of ads draw the most clicks. But what about those who do not click, the many millions of others whose eyes merely flit across the screen? Disney and other companies say they believe that not nearly enough is known about them — what kinds of ads in which configurations are likeliest to draw them, and hold them?
Read the entire article @ NYTimes.com
Changing to Meet the Market
The following article is proof of the fact that, no matter how big your business is and no matter how high your revenue, or how large your advertising campaign may be, no business is immune to having to continuously change and grow in order to meet market demands and keep your customers happy and coming back.
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With the closure of Circuit City earlier this year — and Comp USA before that — Best Buy is the only remaining national electronics chain. On its face, that would seem like a good thing for the company. But analysts argue that Best Buy has inherited a lump of coal.
Even in good times, electronics retailing can be a brutally tough business, littered with failures that were unable to survive thin profit margins, ever-falling prices, feast-and-famine product cycles and, more recently, major price pressure from Internet retailers.
Best Buy is “the last man standing, and it’s a good company,” said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. But “consumer electronics is one of the worst businesses in the world to be in.” Brian J. Dunn, Best Buy’s new chief executive, disputed that characterization.
At the same time, Mr. Dunn, who started as a store salesman at Best Buy in 1985, plans to keep renovating. He acknowledges that being the last remaining chain won’t ensure success.
Mr. Dunn said that Best Buy must account for changing tastes, like the shift away from CDs and DVDs, which have for years been a crucial generator of foot traffic in Best Buy stores. To cope, Mr. Dunn said, Best Buy was in the process of moving those products out of the center of its stores and focusing eyes and attention on fast-growing product areas, like mobile phones and low-cost laptops.
And Mr. Dunn said he wanted to create an atmosphere where consumers were attracted not just to products but also to services that help them master fast-changing technology and configure and connect devices.
“The center of the store will become an expression of the way people connect — connect with movies, music, pictures, to each other — all the things that matter,” he said.
Read the entire story @ NYTimes.com/business
Social Media: Twitter Success
Ahh the joys of a successful social media marketing platform…
Mom-and-Pop Operators Turn to Social Media
SAN FRANCISCO — Three weeks after Curtis Kimball opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco, he noticed a stranger among the friends in line for his desserts. How had the man discovered the cart? He had read about it on Twitter.
For Mr. Kimball, who conceded that he “hadn’t really understood the purpose of Twitter,” the beauty of digital word-of-mouth marketing was immediately clear. He signed up for an accountand has more than 5,400 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his itinerant cart and list the flavors of the day, like lavender and orange creamsicle.
“I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success,” he said. He has quit his day job as a carpenter to keep up with the demand.
Much has been made of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks and Comcastuse Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions. But today, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the free microblogging service, and in many ways, Twitter is an even more useful tool for them.
For many mom-and-pop shops with no ad budget, Twitter has become their sole means of marketing. It is far easier to set up and update a Twitter account than to maintain a Web page. And because small-business owners tend to work at the cash register, not in a cubicle in the marketing department, Twitter’s intimacy suits them well.
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To Read the Entire Article visit NYTimes.com/business
“Crowdsourcing”: A Collective Intelligence of the Many
The wants, needs, preferences, thoughts and feelings of the CUSTOMER. That is what crowdsourcing is but on a very, very large scale. As business owners and entrepreneurs we are always striving to answer the question, what does my customer want, and more specifically, what will my customer buy?
There are many ways to get that answer whether it be with sales reports from like businesses, surveys and my personal favorite, good old fashioned research.
The following article follows a large company with wide customer base: Netflix. They need to accomplish a goal that will help them to sell more products and gain revenue by taking advantage of their own resources (sales reports, in this case customer viewing habits) and employing the help of experts to apply the needed change.
The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused)
A look at recent cases and new research suggests that open-innovation models succeed only when carefully designed for a particular task and when the incentives are tailored to attract the most effective collaborators. “There is this misconception that you can sprinkle crowd wisdom on something and things will turn out for the best,” said Thomas W. Malone, director of the Center for Collective Intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s not true. It’s not magic.”
“It starts out as crowdsourcing and it is culled to a set of action items,” said Jeffrey T. Kreulen, a researcher at the I.B.M. Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif.
Open-innovation models are adopted to overcome the constraints of corporate hierarchies. But successful projects are typically hybrids of ideas flowing from a decentralized crowd and a hierarchy winnowing and making decisions.
OPENING the corporate doors to ideas and inspiration from the collective crowd holds great potential, but there are pitfalls, warns Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. To succeed, Mr. Chesbrough said, a company must have a culture open to outside ideas and a system for vetting and acting on them.
“In business, it’s not how many ideas you have,” he observed. “What matters is how many ideas you translate into products and services.”
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The last quote here is my favorite because it’s true! Owners, employees and collaborators can talk about new changes, procedures or products forever; but until they take action, all of the discussion and discovery is wasted.
Competition: Not just for Small Businesses
Barnes & Noble Plans Online Bookstore to Battle Amazon <–Click for full story>
In an announcement on Monday, Barnes & Noble said that it would offer more than 700,000 titles that could be read on a wide range of devices, including Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry and various laptop or desktop computers. When Barnes & Noble acquired Fictionwise in March, that online retailer had about 60,000 titles in its catalog.
More than 500,000 of the titles now going live on BN.com can be downloaded free, through an agreement with Google to provide electronic versions of public domain books that Google has scanned from university libraries.
Barnes & Noble is promoting its e-bookstore as the world’s largest, an implicit stab at Amazon.com, which currently offers about 330,000 titles for its Kindle device. Currently, Google’s public domain titles cannot be read on a Kindle.
Story originally published by www.nytimes.com
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