My Big Idea

Family Business - easiest way to find your co-founder

According to the CNBC Donny Deutsch show today, the family business is 80% of the businesses in the US.

I happened to be at the entrepreneurs networking event today. There was a discussion with the panelists (successful entrepreneurs) about how to find a trustful co-founder. There were very interesting answers given. Finding a co-founder is like a finding a spouse. You have to date many many people to find the one you can trust and can share the vision. And often, it is difficult to find a partner you can really trust, and people end up working with their family members.

When I think about, it is true that the successful entrepreneurs have a significantly broad network with people, not just they know people, but they have a great network of trusted people. That’s the only way to increase the chance of finding the partner in crime, I guess.

Fake it ’til you make it!

Today’s Yak Pak story was another one of those “fake it ’til you make it!”. The founder of the company started his business by making nice business cards claiming he is the CEO of the company, although he did not have anything. He went to a Chinese manufacture and negotiated the samples. That’s the way he started his business. He says, he made sure that his business card is professional, he has letterheads, nice stationaries with his company logo, and his trade show booth is really professional.

I do agree with the trade show and logo. Branding is always very important. It is unfortunately very true that consumers choose products based on how they look. Even not how they look, but how their package looks most of the time.

But I think we all need an artistic balance about how much we fake it. This story as well as the story of Antrobus Bag both faked it to the Chinese suppliers to get samples. Fortunately, still with the limited reach of Chinese suppliers to the US market, it can work, as many of them do not have a way to assess you or will not tell the story to people in the US. But if you do too much of those in the US, it could backfire on you. Particularly, if you are in the business where relationship is important, it is not a good idea to take the risk to “fake it” too much.

Throughout my career, I found “fake it ’til you make it” is a difficult concept to execute well, although everyone says that is important. After meeting many successful people, I conclude that it is not that necessary. Definitely you do not need to “fake it”.

Instead of “faking it”, what is important seems to be to share the “vision” and “opportunity” with the other party. Successful people can convince you to be a part of the team to achieve the “vision”. And to convince people to be a part of the team, they are actually very honest about what are confirmed and what are still dreams. It is more of “believe it, sell it ’til you make it”.

It is easy to say, and difficult to execute. There’s a temptation in our life to fake it, because we want to make it so much. But I would advocate not to fake it.

How can we create more time?

Last few weeks, I am so busy that my mind is spinning. I think all entrepreneurs experience the issue of time management. What we do will directly impact on our results. If we work one hour more, we will gain more. At the same time, the gain does not come that easily. Most of the time, we are spending our time on things that do not directly generate money, but with a hope that may generate money.

I found a great blog post for entrepreneurs who are looking for tips to create more time in a day. Naomi Dunford has been writing a series of articles “Time Management for Entrepreneurs”.

It is now the end of October. Before the holiday season starts, we have only one month. If we could get 4 more hours a day based on Naomi’s tip, that can help us to have 10 more extra day of work before the holiday starts. Let’s get down to work hard.

Starting from $200, doing whatever it takes

Wow, it has been a long time since I turned on a TV last time. It has been such busy weeks.

Today, CNBC Donny Deutsch show was showing an interview with Paula Deen. I truly enjoyed this interview.

After continuous life struggles, she decided to pick up her passion of cooking. She said she started with $200 investment. Now she is immensely successful, as a Food Network host. Here are what she said as ingredients of success as much as I caught:

1. Willing to do whatever it takes. Work 16 hours a day, while your friends may be enjoying their hobbies.

2. Be stubborn. Don’t listen to people who tell you that you can not do it.

3. Never satisfied. Take it to the next level. Amazing thing she said is that she is never happy with what she cooks. She wants to do better every time.

4. Listen to your intuition. Don’t do it, when you feel not right, even if you can not articulate it.

She said that what made her successful was the necessity. She needed to succeed to raise kids and survive her life. So she just had to do whatever it takes.

Success Passcode has an interesting article of how to make $200 to $400 in a week. Maybe, we should start from $200, and make an immense success, by doing whatever it takes.

Are women entrepreneurs disadvantaged?

My colleague just sent me a newspaper article.

“It is a well-known and oft-quoted fact that women are starting businesses in the United States at twice the rate of men. The result, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, is 10.4 million businesses owned by women nationwide.

That these businesses aren’t doing all that well is far less talked about. About 43 percent of all businesses owned by women have revenue of $10,000 or less. More than 70 percent have revenue of less than $50,000. And only 3 percent have revenue exceeding $1 million, according to the Women Presidents’ Organization, a non-profit group for women whose businesses take in $1 million or more. By contrast, men clear $1 million at more than twice that rate, or about 7 percent.”

And it analyzes reasons as:

“They think that if they are at $250,000, then in order to get to $500,000 they have to work twice as hard. And they know that twice as hard will kill them.

Understanding their ambivalence, she said, is easier if you remember why most women go into business: to gain control over their lives. In that context, it seems logical to sacrifice potential profit for time.”

They also state that the access to capital was not the issue, and in fact, when they were ready to offer capitals, not many women applied for. And then, they suggest that women should start hiring people to release more time for them, but still grow their businesses.

In many cases, these statistics data can be used to make any interpretation they want to make.

First of all, if we take %, yes, the number with high with men, but if we take the absolute number, the population of women who get to $1M revenues is at the same level with the population of men who get to $1M.

Second of all, not all businesses need to make $1M revenues. Or not all entrepreneurs have to aspire to grow their businesses big. There is no need to make that value judgment. I consider it is perfectly fine if someone is satisfied with $10K revenues, as a supplemental income for the family. It may happen more often with women, just because women are the ones who take care of families. And taking care of families is already a job itself. (Which these articles tend to forget) If there’s any issue, we need more men to take care of families maybe…

Third of all, many professional sole proprietors, like lawyers, programmers, and contract sales, do make a lot of income, and seldom have $1M revenues. There could be a possibility that many women left big organization to be sole proprietors to have a bit more independence.

The article also acknowledges that if women really want to make their businesses to more than $1M level, they can do so as well as men do. I would not say everything is equal. Women may have more difficult time raising capitals, partly because still there are more male investors who tend to invest in people they know, meaning men. But in today’s world, these are something we, women can overcome, if we really want to.

My friend was investigating to buy a franchise. He in the end decided not to do so, just because he did not want to spend so much cash to buy it. The operation was making far less than $1M, but delivering good enough for him to support his family, hence, he seriously considered it.

Businesses that generate more than $1M need to be set up with a bit different mindset. It is not like someone start making $10K revenues a year, and suddenly has to be ambitious to grow it to $1M. We have to think about the fundamental market opportunity, build a proposition around it, and build an operation.

I am not against providing a lot of support to women entrepreneurs. In fact, I am the biggest advocate to create a community of women entrepreneurs to support each other. Like men mentor men, women should mentor women. As I mentioned, there are still barriers for women, and we can definitely help each other.

I am just not happy with the way the article is written and phrased as if there is a big issue around women entrepreneurs’ ambition level.

Do you agree with my opinion?