Category Archive: Entrepreneurship
We Mean Business: Poka Dott
Posted Thursday November 13, 2008
For some reason, Tivo didn’t pick up a We Mean Business episode this week, so I’m reaching back to earlier in the season, before I started my recaps. The team visited Poka Dott, a party supply store north of Los Angeles. Poka Dott is deep in the red and just falling deeper, and, worse, owner Stephanie hasn’t told her husband how much she’s losing. Major problems they uncover include:
- Too much merchandise in the store means a lot of money is tied up in inventory
- Too much merchandise in the store means that customers can’t find what they’re looking for
- Disorganized and poorly-merchandised displays don’t highlight products and make it hard for customers to find what they’re looking for
- Outdated point-of-sales system is clunky
- Too many employees means high cost of operations compared to sales possible in the store
- The store’s signs are hard-to-see from the street
- Store is unknown in the area and gets little traffic
We Mean Business: Berry Elegance
Posted Wednesday November 5, 2008
This week, the We Mean Business team takes on Berry Elegance, a store that makes berries and other desserts dipped in chocolate. Berry Elegance is stalled, with sales falling short and the two owners in disagreement on how to run the business.
We Mean Business: Out Back Catering
Posted Tuesday October 28, 2008
This week’s We Mean Business follows the makeover of Out Back catering, a Southern California catering company that serves down-home food at parties. Out Back has been successful for two decades but has recently seen its bookings and revenue drop. With the founder’s daughter interested in taking a bigger role at the company, our heroes wade in to see what they can do to turn the business around.
We Mean Business: Jazyhair
Posted Wednesday October 15, 2008
There’s a fun new show on A&E - We Mean Business a small business makeover show. With all the successful personal and home style makeover shows out there, it’s nice to see one just for entrepreneurs. Since I had so much fun blogging about American Inventor here a few years ago, I’m going to weekly summarize the latest We Mean Business episode - and throw in an idea or two about what I think the entrepreneur really should do to make over their business.
Luck Favors the Prepared
Posted Thursday October 25, 2007
Nothing ever goes right for my neighbor. His tires are flat, someone broke his cabinet (the one that he left in the driveway), and his car accidentally got impounded. The things he hopes for never pan out. For Steve Jobs, it’s the opposite story - Apple sold a boatload of Macs last quarter, more than anyone expected. It seems like, after years of hoping, Steve finally got some iPod users to make the big switch to the Mac.
Top 6 Small Business Web Site Mistakes
Posted Friday October 5, 2007
In a former life, I designed Web sites for a living — I still do a bit of consulting here and there. For someone starting a new business, having a great Web site can make a big difference. But it’s not always clear how to make a site that really sells online. Here are some common mistakes that companies of all sizes make on their Web sites, as well as some tips and tools you can use to make sure these mistakes don’t appear on your site.
Just Like Being in a Disney Movie
Posted Thursday September 27, 2007
Starting a company is a messy business. Things go wrong. Worse, things that you never thought could go wrong go wrong. You have to create everything afresh, and that always takes longer than expected. It’s a mess, and it’ll get you down. But you just have to believe. You can be the princess. You can go home again. It’s like a Disney movie — you just have to believe.
Quickbooks: Best Payroll Processing for Small Businesses
Posted Thursday September 6, 2007
A few weeks ago, I switched my company over to Intuit’s Quickboks Payroll, replacing ADP as our processors. Only two payrolls later, I’m already in a groove with the quick and easy system. Why, if it didn’t involve large amounts of money moving out of my account, running payroll would be a joy!
Amazon Got Me Trouble (But My Business Plan Saved Me)
Posted Wednesday August 15, 2007
Everyone expects free shipping, thanks to Amazon. Including my company’s customers. I can’t blame them; heck, I expect free shipping myself. But it’s tough when you’re sending 30lb boxes of perishable goods around the country. Shipping costs can be equal to product costs for some East Coast destinations — and this cuts down on my sales. It’s tough, but there is a silver lining. Once again, simply having a business plan has saved me. Well, that and making some phone calls.
Introducing Dine to Thrive
Posted Monday May 7, 2007
For the past year, I’ve been working on starting a company, and I’m proud to announce that we are finally in business. Really, it’s just the beginning of an entrepreneurial journey, but it feels like a big change to me. So, here it is: introducing Dine to Thrive.
On A Shoestring
Posted Tuesday March 6, 2007
It’s tempting to spend money on your entrepreneurial dream; the problem is, money is finite and dreams are infinite. Unless you’re Mel Karmazin, investing billions in your new baby is out of the question. So how do you get off the ground?
Chrysler, Ford, GM, and the Dark Side of Sales
Posted Tuesday February 20, 2007
It’s not a good time to be an American automaker. Ford is undergoing yet another restructuring, only two years after starting their last one. GM is about to become the #2 in the industry — passed, embarrassingly enough, by Toyota. And Chrysler may be sold by Daimler-Benz’s for the fire sale price of $5 billion.1 It’s like the ’80s again, this time without Lee Iacocca and his K-Car or Michael Keaton running a US auto plant in Gung Ho. How did they blow it so quickly after saving US car companies once? The surprising truth seems to be: sales were too good. And, even more surprisingly, good sales can be trouble for all of us, especially entrepreneurs like me (and maybe you).
Entrepreneurial Tool #2: The Business Plan
Posted Saturday June 17, 2006
This tool is close to my heart right now because I’m spending most of my time writing one of these for the venture I’m planning to start. My partner, reasonably enough, would like to get on with things now that we’ve written the Feasibility Analysis; but the truth is that the Business Plan is a very different document than the Feasibility Analysis. In simplest terms, the Feasibility Analysis is an internal document, while the Business Plan is an external one.
American Inventor: Finale Recap
Posted Saturday May 20, 2006
I’m glad I referred to the last episode of American Inventor as “the final climactic episode,” because the true season finale was a gigantic let-down, five minutes of television squeezed into a bare hour. We learned who was voted winner; we saw retrospectives on every contestant; there were a few special guests; that was it.
American Inventor: Episode 12 Recap
Posted Saturday May 13, 2006
So this was it — the final, climactic episode, featuring our last idea of who the American Inventor is, what his (in this case) invention is, and their last chance to pitch us. Either that, or this show was one big commercial for advertising company DDB Worldwide. Also, somebody named Matt Gallant spent a lot of time on stage despite having not been relevant earlier in the season. Finally, this week’s installment seemed to be about being a creative director, not about being an American Inventor. But, apart from that, they really nailed it.
American Inventor: Episode 11 Recap
Posted Saturday May 6, 2006
I would really like to play poker with American Inventor judge Doug Hall, because I could tell who he was going to pick as his bracket’s winner through much of his final speech in episode 11. Now, you have to read through most of this entry before finding out who that was, but that’s fine because we had some fun watching some of our competitors this week — magician Joe and his wife Jenny Safudo and their FlushPure toilet seat; grandmother Sharon Clemens and her restroom door clip; and Janusz Liberkowski and his (potentially) revolutionary car seat.
American Inventor: Episode 10 Recap
Posted Saturday May 6, 2006
Episode 10 was very nearly a repeat of Episode 8’s designer-led disaster. From the beginning, all three designer groups went totally off-target. This was a bad, bad sign for our three inventors, Bobby and his Tonerbelt; Jodi and her Headliner!; and Ed Hall and the Word Ace.
American Inventor: Episode 9 Recap
Posted Friday April 28, 2006
I’ll admit, when I saw that Mary Lou Quinlan was going to be our judge this week, I expected an exceptionally teary episode. But, instead, I got what I’d wished for in the last episode a tightly-constructed show that introduced us to the inventors, showed us their challenges and the development process, and then talked about the reasons behind the final decision to advance one contestant. This improvement was matched by an improvement in the inventors’ outcomes: real development and real change took place during those 30 days, and real, usable products came out in the end. This was a good episode.
Feasibility Analysis Steps 5&6: Team and Financials
Posted Sunday April 23, 2006
The final sections of the feasibility analysis are the simplest to describe but, in some ways, the hardest to execute. These sections, the team assessment and the financial projections require you, even more than do the other sections of the analysis, to follow the first commandment of entrepreneurship: “thou shalt not bullshit thyself.”
American Inventor: Episode 8 Recap
Posted Friday April 21, 2006
Finally, we’re down to the real products and we get the chance to see how the inventors really do when they’re under pressure. Our final twelve contestants have been divided into four three-contestant brackets, each decided by one judge. In each of the next four shows, we get to see one bracket develop their products and one inventor from that bracket be selected to go forward. This is a sound idea, and, based on other reality TV shows an hour-long episode should be enough time to both learn about our contestants (the show is, after all, about the inventor) and about the development of their products. Sadly, we see none of the latter and even the former doesn’t add on to what we’ve learned in previous episodes. Oh well, at least we got to see videos of real-world invention testing.
American Inventor: Episodes 5 & 6 Recap
Posted Sunday April 16, 2006
Episodes five and six of American Inventor marked a bit of a departure from the series’s format, exchanging a focus on weird ideas and wacky behavior for a bit of heartstring exploitation rarely seen outside Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. We got to hear each remaining inventor’s story, always delivered in the most heart-wrenching way (“we made these plastic cookie stands for my mother because we care so much about how she sacrifices so much gives so much to our family so we don’t want her cookies to cool and stick together”). All this was part of a two-episode “elevator pitch” session.
American Inventor: Episode 4 Recap
Posted Friday April 7, 2006
Episode Four brought in the last few inventors, and it was really more of the same. Good laughs at some of their expense, of course — probably more fun for the audience than for the inventor — but I’ll sure be happy to see the real competition start. By and large, the inventors made mistakes that we’d seen before, although many of the inventors were good enough to make more than one mistake at a time. If you’re keeping score at home, we once again learned:
- Don’t invest too much in your product
- Do your research
And, as a new (but very important!) lesson, we also saw:
- Actually have a product
Feasibility Analysis Step 4: Product Definition & Development
Posted Wednesday April 5, 2006
What, exactly, is your product or service? Can you make or provide it successfully? The Product Development section is where you prove that you can actually do at all what you say you’re going to do (the other steps in feasibility analysis prove that you can do it successfully). In this section you’ll cover:
- What exactly is the product?
- What technology is needed? Is it mature?
- How will prototyping and testing be handled?
- Does any intellectual property need to be acquired?
American Inventor: Episode 3 Recap
Posted Saturday April 1, 2006
If there was one lesson to this week’s American Inventor entries, it was “do your research.” Most of the products that were kicked out either obviously failed to meet the actual (rather than surface) needs of the market, while many of the rest require going head-to-head against a Fortune 500 company or bucking industry operating norms. Both are good ways to get into trouble.
Feasibility Analysis Step 3: The Market and Customer Research
Posted Sunday March 26, 2006
No matter what your product or service, you need to actively get people to buy it. That means knowing who your customer is, understanding what their needs are, and matching both your product and your marketing to the customer. There is no successful product that doesn’t solve some customer pain, and you must understand how the customer feels that pain and how the customer wants to hear about your solution to that pain. That means not just talking to the customer but also listening to them, at great length.
American Inventor: Episode 2 Recap
Posted Friday March 24, 2006
This week’s American Inventor was a bit less rollicking than last week’s episode, but it was still filled with all manner of interesting inventions (and interesting inventors). Three particular business issues were shared across many of the inventions in this episode:
- Low-volume products
- Easy-to-imitate products
- Inventors who sunk a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and time into a bad idea
American Inventor: Episode 1 Recap
Posted Monday March 20, 2006
If you’re a geek like me, you probably tuned into American Inventor last week. What’s not to love about a show that takes normal people with great ideas and gives them the chance to succeed? Dreams, business, cleverness, all that good stuff — and it’s a moderately entertaining show. I’ll be recapping it every week, looking at the inventions (and inventors) through the lens of the tools and knowledge I’ve gained getting my MBA. The first two episodes are the “cattle call” shows, just as in American Idol, with a ton of applicants from all over; I’ll just call out a few details from those shows, but, once we start reviewing different inventions and pitches, I’ll come up with a way to save any invention that gets eliminated. That should add a little challenge for me and a little fun for you.
Poker and Effectual Thinking
Posted Thursday March 16, 2006
One of the best parts of business school is the guest speakers; the most recent to drop in was World Poker Tour founder Steve Lipscomb. Steve, first of all, was a rollicking, fun speaker; better than that, he told a great story about how he got to where he is today (that is, founder of a $100 million public company that, um, televises poker tournaments). His story illustrates the flip side of MySpace Founder Chris DeMarco’s story — that it’s important not just to know your customer, but to be out ahead of them, providing leadership for the market, and using your particular skills to deliver that leading product.
Meeting MySpace's Chris DeMarco
Posted Sunday March 5, 2006
If you’ve joined MySpace, as something like one out of five Americans have, then your first new friend there was MySpace co-founder Tom. Less prominent is MySpace’s CEO, Chris DeMarco; but he’s still the guy with the big title, and, even better, he’s a Marshall alum. Best of all, I got to meet him on Saturday, when he came to speak at the Greif Center Networking Day.
Feasibility Analysis Step 2: The Industry and Competitive Analysis
Posted Sunday February 19, 2006
If you want to play with the big boys — and since you’re starting your company from scratch, everyone out there is a big boy right now — then you’d better know who those big boys are and what game they’re playing. That’s why the next step in your feasibility analysis is a thorough investigation of the industry in which you plan to operate.
Feasibility Analysis Step 1: The Quick-and-Dirty Best Case
Posted Thursday February 9, 2006
Most descriptions of the feasibility analysis process start with industry research, but, let’s face it, research is a lot of work. The first thing you want to find out is whether or not you should be expending any effort on this idea at all — after all, your time is incredibly valuable and it’s best if you don’t waste it pursuing a pipe dream that will never make you enough money to buy lunch. Fortunately, a very simple Excel spreadsheet can give a quick-and-dirty approximation as to the profit potential of your idea.
Entrepreneurial Tool #1: Feasibility Analysis
Posted Sunday February 5, 2006
The first thing many entrepreneurs do when they finally figure out that business they’ll go into is shout out their pride to the world; other entrepreneurs run off and patent their big idea; and, occasionally, an intrepid soul will just jump forward and get incorporated. Rarely, however, does an entrepreneur really dig down into the question: can this idea, in that mean, scary world out there, work? Compared to quitting your job and putting a card table and folding chair out in the garage and calling it corporate headquarters, asking that question, and analyzing and understanding the results — carrying out what’s known as a feasibility analysis — is both a prudent and a potentially very profitable step one.