Archive for January, 2010
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
It didn’t take long after the launch of Apple’s new touchpad for the jokes to start flying. Yes, the name – iPad – sounds like a feminine product. Case in point: one of yesterday’s top trending topics on Twitter was #iTampon. For those of you who don’t get the relevance of that, trending topics on Twitter highlight the buzz – what everyone is talking about. Adding #iTampon to a person’s tweet was quickly picked up as the way to make fun of the name of Apple’s newest product as an extreme faux pas. And the jokes were actually pretty funny, in a sick sort of way. If they were looking to build buzz with the name, they certainly achieved their objective but I’m not sure this was the kind of buzz they anticipated.
Interestingly enough, the “Apple IPad” was originally a not-so-flattering skit that MadTV put on years ago. Just search for iPad on YouTube and you’ll find it.
The biggest question I (and many others have): didn’t someone do their RESEARCH before launching this product? Were there any women on the team? And if so, were they not comfortable enough to speak up? HOW could this have gotten past any level of market testing and scrutiny?
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Tags: Apple, diversity, innovation, iPad
Posted in business success secrets, innovation | 23 Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
I was talking with a friend the other day who recently started a business pursuing her passion. She was able to move into securing billable work relatively quickly through word-of-mouth and her network of contacts. As she is branching out, she is looking to develop a more formalized statement of services and marketing messages. The thought of it all, she lamented, was bumming her out. She wanted to DO the work but found herself needing to spend more time than expected to set up the business. Unfortunately, this is not at all unusual. Many people start a business to do what they love and then realize there so much involved in starting a business that its becomes hard to find time to do the “fun” stuff you started the business to do. You need more hours in a day to do both. That’s why it is crucial to find something that drives you – a passion – so it can feed your energy rather than drain it. The best book I’ve found for exploring solutions to this dilemma is The E-Myth  Revisited by Michael Gerber. If you’re starting a business and haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.
We were talking about her business – a service many people could use – but I was (in my normal boot-in-the-butt form), asking who her target market was. Had she chosen a niche? What was her marketing strategy? The blank but overwhelmed stare told me what I suspected: she didn’t know. Now this is a really smart lady, but she was visibly frustrated by not having answers to questions that apparently nagged at her as well. What she had discovered is a trap many entrepreneurs fall into: shoot first, ask questions later.
I see it all the time. I have an idea/skill/talent/product. I think it is cool, that people need it. My friends and family see the need or the value, but that’s as far as I’ve gone to validate my idea or my fine tune my approach to the market. And when the capital requirements tend to be low, it is tempting to just quickly hang out a shingle and call it a business without doing any serious primary market research. In my experience, this can be deadly.
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Tags: Marketing, Marketing strategy, Michael Gerber, Target market
Posted in Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, business plan, business success secrets | 22 Comments »
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
I know a lot of people have long predicted the death of traditional news media such as the weekend newspaper, but it remains one of my favorite Sunday morning rituals. Settling in to read news on my laptop does just have the same appeal. This morning, I was pleased to find interesting reading around two of my favorite subjects: entrepreneurship and work/life balance. First, I’ll talk about the entrepreneurship and tackle the work/life balance in my next post.
In today’s Washington Post Magazine, there was a great article on Kevin Plank and Under Armour. Under Armour in addition to being close to home physically (I live near Baltimore), carries a personal connection. My nephew Kevin Kirk was recruited by CEO Kevin Plank to be an intern. After reading this article, I understand why Mr. Plank took such a shining to my college-age nephew: I think he sees in him the same entrepreneurial spirit he has always exhibited. Based on the article, it seems both Kevins (Plank and Kirk) spent a good deal of their teenage years finding different ways to make some money. For Plank, in college, it was selling flowers. For my nephew (who is still in college) it has been selling girls’ accessories like head bands, pashmina shawls, flip flops, purses – whatever he can get in cheap supply and sell at girls’ and women’s sports tournaments.
One of the things that stood out to me is how Under Armour has engaged in an intense battle to overtake their competition: Nike and Reebok. Sort of a David and Goliath story with multiple Goliaths. What Under Armour has accomplished so far is amazing and I’m sure if you asked someone today about starting up in an industry with such large, established competition they would tell you that you’re nuts. If anyone had told Kevin that, he certainly wasn’t listening. With smart marketing, sheer determination, and maniacal focus, Kevin Plank has beaten the odds and turned the company he started right out of college into a force to be reckoned with approaching $1B in revenues. Impressive indeed.
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Tags: Entrepreneurship, Kevin Plank, Under Armour
Posted in Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, business success secrets, innovation | 32 Comments »
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
This past week, it was both my pleasure and my sadness to participate in the graduation of 20
 ACTiVATE(R) Class of 2009 incredible women from the ACTiVATE® at UMBC’s Class of 2009. I am sad because we have spent every Monday night of the last year together (OK – we took the summer off!). As with classes before, it’s been a great experience. I felt privileged to witness incredible growth in already strong, accomplished women. Just goes to show – we all have room to grow no matter WHAT stage we’re at!
Dr. Kimberly Brown, ACTiVATE® @ UMBC Class of 2007, did an excellent job at delivering the keynote speech. She talked about what motivates people to make the leap into entrepreneurship – to move from the finite realm of job descriptions to the infinite possibilities entrepreneurship brings. ACTiVATE®, she said, made a difference for her by making the impossible indeed VERY possible. When she joined the program, she was negotiating to buy a business but at a standstill. Some simple advice she received at her interview provided her with the information she needed to move the talks along and purchased a government contract just 2 days into the class. Her company, Amethyst Technologies was born. What started as a 2 person company with 1 client has now grown 20 people with 9 clients, purely through word-of-mouth marketing. Incredible.Getting to know Kimberly through the program and outside of it, I am confident Amethyst is posed for even greater growth and impact under her leadership. Her opportunities are infinite.
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Tags: ACTiVATE, Amethyst Technologies, Business, Entrepreneurship, Small business, UMBC
Posted in Entrepreneurship, business success secrets | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
In a recent Washington Post editorial on leading into 2010, a question was posed:
“Last year was a tough one for many organizations, with smaller workforces required to do more with less. The new year looks to be more of the same. How can leaders of such organizations motivate their people as they head into 2010?”
Besides this being somewhat pessimistic about what the year holds in store for us, I found it a pretty broad question with varied answers from the team of business executives chosen to respond. The reply that got my attention came from Beth Brooke with Ernst & Young. She’s also a fellow Corporate Ambassador with Vital Voices. Her answer can be best summed up in her own words: “If cost-cutting wrapped up the last decade, this decade should be launched by innovation stimulated by the friction of diversity.”
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Tags: Business, Ernst & Young, innovation, Leadership, Vital Voices
Posted in Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, business success secrets, innovation | 9 Comments »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
My father did not believe in failure. He once relayed a story about a conversation he had with a high school teacher (a priest, for whatever it is worth). He was not doing well in the class, and his teacher asked my father how he would feel if he failed. My father’s response: “I can’t fail.” Indignant at his seemingly arrogant retort, the teacher came back “Oh, you can fail my class, boy. I can see to that.” My dad’s reply: “You can give me a failing grade, but I can’t fail if I’ve learned something.”
I’m happy to say that I’ve inherited or adopted (or a combination of both) his outlook on failure.
My nephew was bemoaning (over Facebook) his recent holiday retail fiasco. He had hoped to clean up on an entrepreneurial opportunity that didn’t quite work out. My words of wisdom (though he might have seen them as something else at the time): You can’t fail if you’ve learned a lesson, though sometimes lessons can be expensive. And that ‘expense’ doesn’t always have to be money – sometimes it is our time. When I talked to him, we discussed what he learned. Where the experience was costly from a monetary perspective, he learned some tough lessons he’s not likely to repeat. So was his foray into holiday retail a failure? Hardly.
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Posted in Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, business success secrets | 10 Comments »
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