Posts Tagged ‘Entrepreneurship’
Entrepreneurship: Do You Have What It Takes?
As the global economy undergoes more changes (and it will continue to do so) even more people will choose to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. Changes to corporate mindsets, downsizing and other upheavals in the “safe” world of formal employment are forcing many to embrace entrepreneurship, and start their own small businesses. Add to those the people with the burning desire to “be their own boss” and you have plenty of new entrants into the wonderful, frightening, exciting and exhausting world of being a business owner.
However, whatever your reasons for considering entrepreneurship instead of formal employment, there are a few traits you will need to cultivate in order to succeed.
Navigating the Twists & Turns of Entrepreneurship
When you sign up to be an entrepreneur, buckle your seatbelt and hang on tight because you are about to go on the biggest and best amusement park ride ever. Seriously, entrepreneurs face challenges every day and yet the best ones know that each day is to be celebrated as a win, no matter what.
Think about all the phases an entrepreneur must go through to succeed. You’ll trip and fall a bit – and you may even secretly shed some tears from time to time. On other days, you’ll be beaming with the biggest smile friends have seen on your face in years. They’ll wonder what you’re up to or who you met or what happened to you all of a sudden.
Hey Entrepreneurs: Be Scared, and Do It Anyway!
Speaking from personal experience, quitting my job to start my own company was one of the most unanticipated decisions I have ever made – and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Being an entrepreneur has led to the thrilling adventure which now defines my life.
Starting multiple companies over the years has brought an immense amount of passion, inspiration and love to my life. The entrepreneurial experience has taken me to places I would have never gone without having chosen such a path. Everyday brings a new and continual flow of challenges that seem to be mini triumphs – high points of a life journey and human freedom.
Why Entrepreneurs are Unique
Over the last few weeks, I have attended numerous networking events, pitch parties and conferences in a wide variety of industries including music, film, technology, government and entrepreneurship. In going from event to event, you start to notice how different events are run, how the participants, sponsors and organizers interact with each other and the participants of the events. As I look back at my run of these events, I want to highlight what I think is a unique and great trait that entrepreneurs have – the willingness to help every other entrepreneur.
Founder of NYEW Elected to AOL Small Business Board of Directors
As you may have seen recently on twitter or facebook, I have been elected to the AOL Small Business Board of Directors. This is a prestigious achievement for both The Relentless Foundation and its cornerstone event – New York Entrepreneur Week (NYEW).
With a driven and relentless global vision for entrepreneurship globally, I am humbled to be surrounded by a group of board members who are visionary thought-leaders, business mavericks and influential innovators, including:
User Experience Design For Entrepreneurs… Can’t My Visual Designer Do That!?!?
One of the mistakes that companies make over and over again is assuming they can save time and money by making their visual designer the same person as their user experience designer. The assumption is that since visual designers and ux designers both deal with the customer facing interface, they both have the same amount and type of knowledge regarding the user. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Just because we work together and produce for the user does not mean that we are using the same skill sets. Most of the time condensing these two roles into one is a huge mistake.
Meeting of the Big Minds (MBM) April 2010
This past weekend I was fortunate enough to attend MBM. The retreat is the brainchild of Dan Lack, the visionary Founder of Pushing Beyond, out of Atlanta, GA. We were introduced by a mutual contact 8 months ago and since then sky has been the limit. In terms of attending MBM, Dan’s only qualification is quite simple – in his humble opinion you must be “one heck of a badass” (quoted word for word).
Should an Entrepreneur Share Their Idea?
Countless entrepreneurs are afraid to share their idea for a new product or service out of fear someone is going to steal it out from under them. This fear is not completely unfounded, but for most fledgling entrepreneurs, the fear is more of a roadblock than a protector.
There are millions of life changing successful business ideas in the minds of entrepreneurs all around the globe that never get to market because they are never shared and developed out of fear of being stolen. Like many things in life, ideas have a limited shelf life and timing is often everything.
