Blunt on Business

Dec

Three Questions Entrepreneurs Need to Ask on Day One

entrepreneurship, start-ups, tips

Mark Kramer of Kramer Communications has a great article on Forbes, The 10 Questions You Should Never Stop Asking. In the article, Mark (we’re not really on a first name basis) details some of his experiences acting as an Interim CEO of a couple of magazines in Philadelphia. It’s a really great article, and all of his questions are dead on. The implicit assumption of his article is that people started asking these questions at some point, and then stopped. In my work with and study of small startups, it seems these questions don’t get asked initially. If they did the business may never have started, or certainly would have started smarter with a better chance of succeeding.

The questions he brings up cut to the core matters I address at Bizdom U, (as well as in my saucy presentation at TEDx).

The Three Questions You Should Start Asking

Kramer’s first three questions (I’m rephrasing slightly) are:

What is your purpose for existing?
Who is your target customer?
Why does anyone need what you’re selling?

I’m going to take these one at a time.

What is your purpose for existing?

First-time startup entrepreneurs often confuse their business’s purpose in existing with what the entrepreneur hopes to gain from the business. To use a technical term, this is a Big Ass Mistake. Your business’s purpose is most assuredly to help customers satisfy a need – not to bring you personal, spiritual, or emotional fulfillment. If you think that’s why YOUR BUSINESS exists, you’re mistaking your purpose in life (fulfillment) with your business’s purpose (satisfying customers). Confuse this at your own peril. If you keep this straight, you’ll keep your business focused on the customer and helping the customer.

Who is your target customer?

You can’t help people, or more appropriately satisfy customers, if you don’t know who they are and what their needs are. It’s a struggle, but you’ve got to disavow yourself of the notion that your business will appeal to everybody (or some equally ridiculously large subset of everybody). It can’t, it won’t, and it shouldn’t. It will appeal to certain people with common demographics or psychographics and those are the people you need to have in mind and help.

Why does anyone need what you’re selling?

Get out, talk to customers. In person. Face to face. It’s uncomfortable in the digital age, but it will give you deep insight into what clients really want and how to best give it to them. Mark nails it when he says “I have rarely seen a company fail if management literally spoke to customers and gave them what they want.”

A bonus word to educators, consultants, incubators, etc.

If you’re in the position where you’re advising someone on starting up a business, make sure you’re encouraging your advisees to ask these questions. Push them on these questions. Hard. Really hard. The kind of hard that leaves a bruise. That hard. We do no service to people if, in the interest of protecting their feelings, we are not blunt, direct and honest in questioning whether they’ve plumbed the depths of these questions and come up with honest answers. In my opinion, this is the great failing of entrepreneurial education, consultation, advising and incubation: the unwillingness to give honest feedback to someone and tell them their idea (as currently formulated and researched) is most assuredly crap. In the interest of being kind, and not ‘crushing someone’s dream’ we let them blindly soldier forward to their doom. If I see someone running headlong toward the edge of a building, I’m not going to encourage them. I’m not going to try and support them in their dream of flying. I’m going to yell “Hey, asshole, you can’t fly!” We all need to be willing to be that direct and blunt.

Great Tips: How to Run a Meeting

entrepreneurship, opportunity, personality, tips

Over at the Art of Manliness, there’s a great series of tips on running a meeting. The Art of Manliness, despite the off putting name (to some people – me, I get it), is overall a really excellent blog – and an example of how to build a community of common interest. The common interest on Art of Manliness revolves around shaving with a straight razor and drinking cocktails (both of which I can get behind).

My favorite tip from the many is:

Summarize the meeting. At the end of the meeting, quickly tick off a list of everything you have accomplished and resolved to do. Delegate tasks and make sure everyone is absolutely clear on what their individual responsibilities are. Don’t ask for “other business.” You’re just opening a can of worms. Remember, if it’s not on the agenda, it’s not going to be discussed.

I’ve been to lots of meetings dominated by lots of talk which feels productive. It’s only later, when absolutely no action has been taken as a result of the meeting, that you realize not only was the meeting ineffective, but you’ll never have that hour of your life back. You’ll be on your death bed, and your dying words will be “If only someone had set some action items.”

In the comments share your meeting horror stories or tips.

3 Big Ideas from Big Communications’s Lisa Stern

culture, entrepreneurship, personality, start-ups

3 Big Ideas from Big Communicationss Lisa Stern We had the pleasure of taking the current team of Bizdom entrepreneurs (whom I am calling Team Hammer Pants, since they can’t come up with a team name of their own) to Big Communications, to meet with Lisa Stern, the Founder.

Lisa gave a great overview of the founding story of Big, as well as a description of their culture. I could easily write a dozen entries on Lisa and Big (hell, I could write one just on how great their offices are – they are absolutely beautiful), but I want to focus on 3 Big takeaways from their story and culture.

3 Big Ideas from Big Communications

1. The business you find success in may not be the one you start in.

Big originally started purely doing video production. Now they handle communications for health care companies. This isn’t to say your initial idea is unimportant and therefore unworthy of proper research. Rather, the lesson here is that you’ve got to follow the natural wave of your business and fish where the fish are – build on the success you earn, rather than the success you wish you had.

2. Passion means emotional investment in what you do.

This was a point I tried to emphasize at my TEDx presentation. It’s not about doing what you love, but rather loving what you do. I’ve heard lots of people talk about ‘passion’ and seen people confuse obstinacy and unfounded pride with passion. Having passion doesn’t mean that you can magically will something to happen. Instead, it means bringing an emotional investment to what you do – finding the love in what you do. When I asked Lisa what she’s currently passionate about she said “I’m really passionate about how we staff projects.” Trust me, no one says “When I grow up, I want to staff projects!” But she’s found the interest and passion in that task, and that’s a beautiful thing.

3. Vision is about having a goal you’re moving towards

Another great insight into an oft-cited entrepreneurial trait: vision. Vision isn’t about having a grandiose vision about what success will look like (yachts or being on Oprah), but rather about having a very specific goal you’re moving towards.

Bonus idea: Not really a bonus idea, but rather a combination of the final two, and it’s this – any old passion or vision won’t do. You’ve got to have a specific type of passion and vision to be a successful entrepreneur. I meet a lot of people who are very emotional (what they think is ‘passionate’) and have a well defined vision for themselves (usually of them on a yacht with Oprah), who think as a result they’re entrepreneurs. I can give you a well defined vision of what I’d do if I won the lottery (it wouldn’t be Oprah or a yacht), but that doesn’t mean I’m going to win it. I’m extremely passionate about fantasy football, but that doesn’t mean I should make a career out of it.

What do you think? Will any old vision or passion do? Or do you need something more?

Three Questions Entrepreneurs Need to Ask on Day One