SustainableWork

Commercial social networking has a tawdry history.

Many of us who have been in the game for long enough have memories of walking into a room full of self-certified financial planners and 'business brokers' drinking cheap beer in a stale hotel banquet room all looking for the keys to your money.

The misery that these events brought on was deep. Mostly because of all the time you'd wasted by falling for another come-on for business development socializing.

The Small Business Center at the Technical College (WCTC) I've been teaching through has done a very nice job of bringing these events into the 21st century. If anyone reading this wants some good suggestions for what I think works here, send me a note.

When a new course at the college opened up called 'The Art of Networking' I was asked to teach it. My first inclination is that I didn't want to do it because of the memories from the old days.

But when I watch new - and seasoned - entrepreneurs feeling their way through the newer, better versions of networking events put on by the Small Business Center, I sense a need for some one-on-one, interactive training for the way these things work in the age of Tom Peters and web 2.0

WCTC gave me a blank sheet of paper. I can't wait, the more I think about this. For anyone who has read these posts for a while, you'll know my approach to networking is finding ways to help your network. That's what I'm quickly filling in on those blank sheets of paper.

A good primer on my approach was summarized by Guy Kawasaki who I link to on these posts regularly. Always good stuff. Guy quoted author Darcy Rezac as someone he thought had the best definition of schmoozing: "'Discovering what you can do for someone else.' Herein lies eighty percent of the battle: great schmoozers want to know what they can do for you, not what the you can do for them. If you understand this, the rest is just mechanics."

These courses are the classroom variety and will be taught in Waukesha, WI from Mid November through Mid December, once per week on Wednesday evenings. There will even be a large group networking 'Connections' meeting sponsored by the Small Business Center on one of the class nights that we'll all immerse ourselves in.

If anyone comes looking for short term, easy money strategies we'll have a dunce cap on hand.

For everyone who comes looking for ways to work with a wildly changing and diverse marketplace in an honorable and valued way, I'll have extra gold stars.

The link for information and enrollment is below.

Thanks to the Small Business Center and WCTC for the opportunity and the blank sheets of paper. This will be fun for all involved.


Info about Networking Course at WCTC


Guy Kawasaki's blog on The Art of Schmoozing

Labels: Guy Kawasaki, Tom Peters

Even better, it's free.

The web seminar folks at WebEx have lined up Guy Kawasaki to do a presentation on the art of evangelism Next Tuesday Sept. 25 at 11 AM PDT - 1 PM CDT for my Great Lakes area startup friends.

For anyone who has worked with me on their startups or taken one of my courses they know that the main job of the entrepreneur is evangelizing.

It's a wonderful word and an even better day job.

The concept was likely around before Guy defined the role, but it's certainly never been the same since he helped bring the early Apple systems to life back in the day.

Birthing new enterprises and new products is the essence of entrepreneurship and there is no better evangelist drawing breath than Mr. Kawasaki.

This is free. Not sure if there is a limited registration, but I'd recommend registering ASAP.

As entrepreneurs, you'll be better off doing this than anything else you could put on your plate for that hour or so. I rarely say this, but, trust me on this one.

You need more Guy Kawasaki in your life and here's a great opportunity.


Guy Kawasaki's blog discussing this, with link to registration at WebEx

Labels: entrepreneurship, Guy Kawasaki, startups

I've been thinking about ways to put real cost numbers to doing low cost start ups.

In truth, there are almost as many kinds of start ups as there are enterprises out there.

A 'low cost' franchise start up can cost many tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and still represent the low end of that spectrum.

A 'low cost' high tech start up can cost millions.

So I circle back to this concept of the citizen entrepreneur that I wrote about earlier this summer. I've been looking for representative numbers that are accurate and also that can give hope to my peers that self enterprise is not only open to the rest of us, but available in ways that are startlingly inexpensive.

A good reference came in from an unexpected source this summer. Guy Kawasaki (linked on the right and mentioned often lately in these posts), one of the leading high tech venture capitalists in the world today, started a new company of his own.

I was anxious to read about all the high tech financing machinations somebody with his experience would be able to muster. I expected the inside details of dealing with his fellow Silicon Valley moguls would be a great look under the hood at that expensive start up world.

Nope.

June 03, 2007
By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09

A really cool, international start up for about $12K. And a big share of that is expenses you and I wouldn't have to incur. Mr. Kawasaki is a big time venture capitalist and attracts a lot of attention, so he needed to defend his company digitally and legally. That contributed about $8K to his start up cost.

I want to use this start up example as a true to life, in the trenches, publicly validated example of how you can start up inexpensively.

I've done my own start up this summer for under $2K, but I, like Mr. Kawasaki, know how to do many of the steps myself. I have also started successful companies out of a loose change jar in the past.

Do I subscribe to all his thoughts 100%? I think you have to read everything carefully. Sure, Guy starts out saying he had zero business plans, but at the end he also acknowledges that he had 24 years of skinning his knees and banging his head in this subject prior to launch.

Overall, I think this is a wonderful post from Guy Kawasaki and I think you can use it to stir up not only hope, but reality as you design your own new enterprise.

Go get 'em, friend.


Guy's bootstrapping post

Guy's Truemors site

Labels: bootstrapping, Guy Kawasaki

I'll start by saying I just can't keep up with Guy Kawasaki's blog. It is jammed with valuable entrepreneurial storytelling, guidance and fun every time I open it. I've posted references to his blog, and link there permanently from this site.

Guy just did an on line interview with Tim Berry, the founder of Palo Alto Software that sells a software program called Business Plan Pro. This is probably the most widely used software program out there for writing business plans.

They discuss in good detail the merits and challenges of writing business plans. I recommend it.

Here is one question and answer I think has special resonance for small, self-funded or micro-funded start ups...

Question 6: What are some of the common mistakes (in writing a business plan)?

Answer: The worst by far is focusing on the plan instead of planning. This generates the idea that you create a plan as a document, and the related misunderstanding that the plan is for somebody else. You don’t postpone life while you’re developing a plan; you’re always developing the plan. In the meantime, “Get going.” Here are some other common mistakes:

• Blue-sky blurry: lots of strategic thinking without any hard facts. Planning requires specifics: dates, deadlines, responsibility assignments.

• Trying to do everything. I use the rule of displacement: everything you do rules out something else.

• Thinking that being the lowest price option is important. It isn’t. The price and volume thing they talk about in economics classes is for 200-year-old lumps of coal, not your business. Use price as a statement of quality. Leave the low-price strategies for Walmart and Costco.

• Mistaking profits for cash. Profitable companies go broke all the time. You don’t spend profits. Plan your working capital well.


Mistaking the plan for the planning. Amen. This is the easiest mistake for new entrepreneurs to make. It's not the document. It's doing the document.

Incidentally, Business Plan Pro is what my new teaching venue, Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC) uses in their business courses. WCTC is making this software available at a really good discount to any class members of my new courses.

Now as Mr, Berry so aptly says about start ups, "Get going!"


Guy Kawasaki's interview with Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software's Business Plan Pro.

Tim Berry's blog. Excellent writing about business plans and planning, as well as a perspective from deep in the trenches.

Business Plan Pro software.

My training courses for new start ups at WCTC

Labels: business plans, Guy Kawasaki, Tim Berry

Guy Kawasaki evangelized me into the most productive parts of what I’m trying to pass off as adulthood.

I fell under Guy’s spell and bought our first Mac circa 1988. $6,000 for a Mac Plus with 256K of memory and a whopping 10MB hard drive. It was the single most productive purchase I’ve ever made. Family unit and I are now on our zillionth Mac and have never looked back.

I thank Mr. Kawasaki for his guidance then and now.

Guy Kawasaki’s blog is bright, fast, informative and always valuable. I highly recommend it. There is a permanent link on the right to get there (and I give those links up VERY grudgingly – two in two years)

You will love Guy’s current book ‘The Art Of The Start’, as well as his previous books. I especially liked ‘Rules For The Revolutionaries’.

In ‘The Art Of The Start’ Guy closes the last chapter with a great quote and then some wonderful (as always) writing.

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good”. – Samuel Johnson

From Guy:

(Chapter 11) “The Art Of Being a Mensch. The three foundations of menschhood are helping lots of people, doing what’s right, and paying back society – simple concepts that are hard to implement.”

Guy Kawasaki is an excellent writer. More importantly, he delivers a lot of valuable information in a great, no BS style.

My kind of resource.

Thank you, Mr. Kawasaki.


Guy Kawasaki's blog, How to change the world. A practical blog for impractical people

In today’s post (5/15/07) Guy interviews Penelope Trunk who writes a very interesting blog from my town of Madison, WI. Great writing style. Brazen Careerist. Advice at the intersection of work and life

wikipedia, Dr.Samuel Johnson

Labels: Guy Kawasaki, Penelope Trunk