Owner: Small Business Entrepreneur Blog URL:http://www.energybyte.com/blogs/ Join Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 01:54:15 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Small Business Entrepreneur Blog, part time entrepreneurship, online business, start ups Site statistics:Click here
Entrepreneurship Failure 2007-04-26 21:37:35 I've decided to write about Entrepreneurship
failure mostly because it's so hard to find relevant resources on it. I can't really talk about that from my experience, so this post is full of relevant outside links (I have added this after previewing the post - lots of blue on it from the external linking :)
While reading "Founders at work" I thought: we have tons of books about successful start-ups, then who would invest time and money writing about failure? First, I don't think you are truly aware that it's going to be an entrepreneurship failure until it's already a failure and second, even if you think it's going to become a failure - that no reason to brag about it (or put it this way, you would want to fail anonymously). I'm not the only one saying we have so little on failure, Brad Feld says in his blog "I’ve noticed a pattern in many of the VC and entrepreneur blogs I read – very few people ever talk about failure"
And still, Entrepreneurs are really afraid
Helping student entrepreneurs succeed in small business 2007-04-24 21:26:56 Ok, I was just preparing to write the small review on Founders at work when I've got contacted by Gregg Blanchard from www.teenbizideas.org with the following "I am the host of TeenBiz: The Podcast, a resource for teens and students to help them start small businesses." Hey, this is about young entrepreneurs - as I've discovered from the Founders at work - a lot of good stuff is created by young business people. And it's about small businesses. I should make place for this in my blog.
Now, young people have a better time listening to other young people (not that I'm so old) so, let's see if www.teenbizideas.org can really help them out. I've listened to the last podcasts and I found them good advice for wanna be entrepreneurs.
I liked very much the idea that young entrepreneurs should be able to "sell the business idea" to their parents first, in order to get their support. If you come from a family that worked in the corporate environment, it will be much more difficult to pr Read more:Helping
Founders at Work - the book 2007-04-24 20:31:12 I've decided to write about a book that had an excellent exposure amongst bloggers. I know some smarter and better bloggers have reviewed the book so far, but it is the kind of book that you can't let go and read in 2 days. It's Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
I actually bought the book following the very nice reviews, and now it's the time to make now. If don't know already, its a collection of interviews with some very famous entrepreneurs.
Tully we take for granted great tools that we use today like Paypal, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Shoops, Apple, Blogger... But the interesting thing is that behind every each tool we have a great entrepreneurship experience - which we are not aware of in the day by day life. Each of these services or products have been a start-up once, with all the problems, crisis, ups and downs at some point.
I'm not going to talk about each of the businesses presented in the book (you should buy the book for that) but to make some conclusions of my o
Employee commitment in bootstrapped versus externally funded companies 2007-04-23 22:41:27 Just a short note that I did some guest-posting on the Boostrapme site, about Employee
commitment in bootstrapped versus
externally funded companies. There are several posts on the subject, for which you should go to the main page http://www.bootstrapme.com
Anyway, I'm am also working on a little review: "Founders at work" - the book, and the other things from the preview:
Entrepreneurship failure
Small businesses going on "survival mode" versus "full speed ahead"
Business values for small companies
Small Business Blogging
But for now, I just need to run my business and also get some sleep. Talk to you soon, so tune up your rss readers for the next posts.
Work force in Romania 2007-04-14 23:20:18 I need to keep with my preview I did on future posts and now it's the time to speak a little about doing business in Romania.
There is of course a particular reason for writing about Romania, and that is because I'm Romanian. The thing is that Eastern Europe causes fear to Western or USA companies (for a number of reasons I'm not going to discuss here). Well, to tell you the truth, I also fear doing business with some countries, so I really understand how, we, Eastern-European are regarded from the other side of the fence. On the other hand, Romania is came in second in the Top 10 Reformers, which means things are changing and improving. Moreover, here are some interesting details on the Romanian "Economic freedom"
Although I have written about Romania before, sometime from pure real experience, sometimes with statistics, this time I want to write a little more on human resources. We don't have a lot of studies on the Romanian work force, so some of the things are based on person
Small Business Blogging 2007-04-30 21:35:52 I've started SmallBusiness
Entrepreneur Blog about 2 years ago and did so far about 130 posts. I don't speak English natively, but got Google Ranking 5, some good links from fellow bloggers (they say my English is wonderful music to their ears) and made it as required reading at the Indiana State University. I'm also owning part of a small business about Web Design.
So how does Small BusinessBlogging
really work?
I must confess, I started blogging as a project for my Master studies, blogging was never in my Business plans for my business. But yes, from the second or third post it became a business blog - sharing insightful small business experiences.
Did it help my business?
I'm running my business on word of mouth and most of my clients are friends of my clients. I have never advertised and even the company site is rarely updated. The blog didn't get me new clients but it served as a "Portfolio/see who I am" thing. When I had to prove myself and establish thrust in Energybyt
Small Business compete with Big Corporation 2007-04-30 19:25:27 Compete with Big Corporation
for employees
We are talking about more than just competing for the same market and customer base, about competing for the same resources.
Now, I can lose one customer, I can lose 10 customer and I can also lose even 100 customers. But the ugly, terrible fact is that I can't afford to lose resources (example programmers) to them. And still, can't really fight on it.
Being a small business, it's very hard to attract good working employees - they are not going to relocate for you, they are not going to leave a better paid job for you, and most likely they are going to leave when they an offer from a big corporation. You simply can't stop them. Sure, each business has it's work force turnover, but when this happens to a really small company - you will be hurt personally and the business is going to take a big hit as well.
Being small, you can't really assign tasks to another person. If you have to deliver something - well, you just have to find your Read more:Small
, Business
, Small Business
I am a biker 2007-05-14 20:01:41 Not sure if you know, but I'm and everyday biker, riding my motorcycle to the office and back. I did somehow developed an obsession for Honda Motorcycles (owned 3 Hondas in total) and started 2 sites for the ones I'm having now: 1993 Honda CB750 Nighthawk and 2007!! Honda CBF600s (don't mind the design, I'm struggling with the content right now and that will take my entire lifetime so it seems).
Hold on, that's not a post about Honda Motorcycles!!It's about special bonds with your customers.
Now, probably from the hippie times (or something) people think there is something bad and ugly about bikers. They seem to get in all sorts of problems, if you ask strangers they will say bikers are dangerous people, if you ask family they will say biking is a dangerous thing (notice the double danger). OK, I'm not such a dangerous man, but I did break my leg last year. So, anyway, I'm using the motorcycle as a mean of transportation (traffic is horrible here in Bucharest) but also disco
Statistics I like most 2007-05-14 19:19:00 If you are into business blogging (or Web in general) like I do, I bet you are checking your traffic statics at least a couple of times a day. Mostly it doesn't any good for the actual business behind - it's just a way to lose time and do an "self-importance" checkout.
Statistics
(amongst other things) help me see what people are looking for on my blog, and then there is Mybloglog - see the blue recent readers rectangle on the right column - that show me what fellow bloggers are visiting my site, and give me a chance to get in contact with them.
But no, that's not the kind of statistic I like most. There is something even more advanced - easy to spot on the web tracking service (I'm using the free version of Statcounter) and that is visits coming from e-mails. If somebody comes to my site following a link he received in his e-mail, this means that somebody else liked (or hated) my blog so much that he spent the time to share his thoughts and send an e-mail about it. Are you foll
10 steps to get the right employees if you are a small business 2007-05-12 16:59:19 I did actually write before about working in a small business versus corporate (from the "how an employee see things" perspective) and also on "Compete with Big Corporation for employees
" - it's really hard to get the right employees if you are small.
Therefore a Small Business has to prepare and put more efforts in getting the employees that are needed. First of all, we have only few sources of man power:
Students, or beginners in general
Friends, partners, or retired people
Already employed worforce
Chances are that if you need quality and performance you'll have to go for the already employed workforce, and that's the hardest way to go. You will need to compete with other companies or sometimes corporations for the same people and you are most of the time in a disadvantaged position (here i wrote why). So if you need people, you don't just need resumes and wait people to come, to have to be prepared to sell yourself to the employee. You have to be able to sell your bu Read more:steps
Entrepreneurs don't want to work 2007-05-10 22:42:27 This title should at least bring me some angry 18 working hours a day entrepreneurs. How can I say that exactly the same people who don't sleep entire nights thinking of their businesses, the same people that suffer from entrepreneurship stress, the same people that make things to move don't want to work?
There are many reasons why people go for Entrepreneurs
hip: get rich, have your own working hours, having a boat, make something for yourself or for your children, pride and self accomplishment. These are the main reasons and the driving forces behind any entrepreneur, that keep him working during nights, during weekends and holidays. Hell, I (as an Entrepreneur) write this blog by night or in weekends, while keeping my day job as well.
OK, but most of the reasons above can be translated in "I don't want to work".
Get rich. What's the point (besides owning expensive stuff) of getting rich? Not working.
Have your own working hours. Right, you just don't want to work unless you f
A true Start-up story: day two - a little history, the second year. 2007-05-20 22:20:17 A true Start
-up story
: Day two
See, I'm now writing 2 days into one for the small business story. So, I've got to tell you about our first entrepreneurship year in day one, now it's time to pass to the more challenging second year.
Strangely enough, the second year started with me changing 9-to-5 jobs again. This was challenging enough, I had to find an employer that will understand, agree and sign that I can run my business as a part time job. Once this transition period was over, my two partners, Simona and Tina got more involved into the business. Simona got us the first "bigger" customers with her direct involvement into sales (I was still learning my way into Web programing and Tina was doing the creatives) and we've got our first PR event (which later evolved into a new business line, in progress a pr and media agency, but I will talk about this later).
This second year was really good in testing our capabilities, finding our strengths and growing as a business. We saved a Read more:little
A true Start-up story: day one - a little history, the first year. 2007-05-20 21:35:38 A true Start
-up story
: Day one
Let's start the day one of telling a small business story with a little
history. So, how does a start-up start? (Note: actual names and some small details are left out for the sake of the story and maybe some legal implications)
First of all, I'm your host for the Journey, Cristian Dorobantescu, a part time entrepreneur from Eastern Europe. That's the story of my small business and of my other 2 partners in the company.
Back in 2005 I've decided to change jobs, from Project Management to Sales, which ended up as changing Employers as well. Taking out the reasons to change jobs, somewhere in the process I've came to realize that no matter how many jobs and employers I will change, I will never probably become really rich (or at least rich enough) as an employee only - I needed to start a business. Later I've discovered that having a business doesn't necessarily and automatically make you rich, but it gives you the opportunity to be rich. Anyway,
A Start-up Story 2007-05-20 20:43:55 I've started a new blog category "A start-up story", for 2 reasons:
One, just by looking at the blog stats I can say that most people are looking for entrepreneurship stories, as a way of verifying if their idea will work and fight against what is called "Entrepreneurship fear"
And second, I reached an important and crucial conclusion for my business, and that is that I'm not making the most out of it (although is going strong an well)
So let me take you to a journey, where I will write about my plans and the steps I'm taking. Although it will be a day one to day x story, it won't be the classical Web experiment as in "let's see if I can monetize a blog in 30 days" or something like that, mostly because I won't be posting every day as some things are going to take longer or simply because I will take my time into developing things. But yes, for the sake of the story, it will be a day 1 to day x journey.
So if you want to know how things are working in a small business, wh Read more:Start
Business values for small companies 2007-05-20 17:02:22 I'm not sure how things are going in your country, but here I hear (or say) way too often:"this (product) is not like it used to be", mostly about big well known corporations. My washing machine is not as good as the last one, my watch only lasted 2 years, my car broke too soon (obviously can't give any names here).
Obviously that is the downside of globalization and cutting cost strategies. First, products are no longer produced where they are supposed to be produces (I mean country of origin) and second, it's really hard to transmit the companies business values across continents and cultures. In a way this is actually not about quality control, cutting cost and cheap labor force, but more or less about losing their business values.
So if big corporations that enforce business values through their bureaucrat mechanism are loosing it, what about small businesses? I think we should think about it in two dimensions:
defining the business values
keeping and communicating the bu Read more:Business
Love cheaters & stuff 2007-05-19 13:14:24 Very strange to see this title in my blog, isn't it? Well, actually it seems that my blog is actually getting other people into blogging, including some colleagues from my 9-to-5 job.
One of them is Laurentiu, who started blogging in full force with his new Love cheaters blog about secret dating and mysterious love affairs. What can I say, he's a sales guy and did find out a passionate subject to write about - for which I admire him truly. I just hope that the stories he is writing about are not real life-experiences :)
The other one is "Black" and he is blogging about ... nothing. http://www.blackonstuff
.com/ is mostly about shareware sales, conferences and e-commerce.
I wish the luck and the best of blogging!
PS: I'm a little jealous on such a great subject like "love cheating". I don't really have any experience in it, but it's such a good choice!
A true Start-up story: day three - a little history, this year. 2007-05-21 14:03:58 A true Start
-up story
: Day three
For the ones that don't know this is day three from a true story of a small business start-up. I managed to compress the first 2 years in the first 2 articles (and yes, this is a shortened story, to answer some questions that I received), which kind of leaves us to the current year, and very close to write about my plans and the steps I'm taking, to show how things are working in a small business.
Before getting in the third day, I must add something that I forgot in day two, and that is that by the end of the year we found another business niche. Sometimes during October we've got two long term customers from UK for whom we did (and still do) some kind of outsourcing work, for which we got a freelancer working.
In December, Simona decided that it should make Energybyte her full time job, and develop (mostly on her own) a media agency called in progress which targets only the Romanian market. By focusing only on the Romanian market we avoided what Read more:little
Abobe Romania, a nice(r) place to work 2007-05-25 13:46:01 If you have followed my small business start-up story so far, I'm not sure if you know, but before that, I got the chance to work at other start-ups including InterAKT, that finally made it it big when it was acquired by Adobe. Back then InterAKT was a start-up just like mine - it's actually funny to think about the similarities with a company that is named Adobe Systems Romania now :)
Anyway, there are plenty of stories about how technology companies started small and make it big, as I've read in the Founders at Work book, but not so many that tell what happened to the companies after being bought. As only a handful of Romanian companies have been acquired, I'm in a fortunate position to be able to tell about the life of such a company after being bought.
I've actually meet with the guys at a recent party, the same old guys that I've spent countless hours and efforts struggling in the start-up days to build something out. Their success came from technical innovation, commitme
A day in the life of a part-time entrepreneur 2007-05-24 16:38:09 Before going to the forth day with my small business start-up story I should say something about the part time entrepreneurship experience.
Part time entrepreneur work day
I'm not sure if my schedule is typical for a part time entrepreneur, but my days are mostly passing like this:
I usually get up at 7 in the morning, start the laptop, make some coffee. This gives me enough time until 8 to check my blog stats, read or write a few urgent e-mails, and think about the things I have to do in the evening. If there is something to be done by my partners during the day, I'm preparing and leave notes.
8 to 9 is dead time, I'm preparing to leave at my 9-to-6 job, and rushing through a horrible traffic with my Honda motorcycle
9-12 and 1-6 are strictly dedicated to my "official" job, this means complete silence from my own business. No e-mails, no phones, no nothing - sometimes is really tricky.
From 12 to 1 I have lunch, and 2-3 times per month I go to the bank to make payments, e
Interview with Small Business Entrepreneur Becky McCray 2007-05-27 02:31:34 As I live in our capital city, Bucharest, and I always wanted to know how business is different in a small town. I had some genuine questions I always wanted to ask another entrepreneur. Becky
McCray from Small
Biz Survival had some interesting answers.
Becky McCray is an entrepreneur and rancher in a small town in Oklahoma. She writes about small business and rural issues. In her spare time, she enjoys photography, safaris, and spoiling her niece and three nephews.
Cristian: For the readers that don't know, Becky shares multiple roles under the same hat. She is co-owner of Allen's Retail Liquors, rancher and business/marketing consultant. I know from my own part time entrepreneurship experience that doing multiple jobs in the same time requires excellent focus and time management, so how do they all work together? What's the biggest challenge?
Becky: Thanks for inviting me to talk with you, Cristian! I must enjoy handling multiple roles, because I've been doing it a long tim Read more:Business
, Entrepreneur
, Small Business
A true Start-up story: day 4 - what to do next 2007-06-01 00:10:19 If you have followed my small business start-up story
, then, you already know that the first year ended with no profit, the second one brought the first signs of success, and now on the third we are going full speed ahead.
Start
ing day 4 of my story, I'm going to document how we (the 3 partners, Tina, Simona and Cristian) are running our business with it's two lines: Web design Energybyte and in progress a media shop and pr agency.
By looking back at our history, I can clearly see some strategic mistakes we did - they didn't kill us, but slowed us down. If you are used to stories that only show how great a company is, well, you will see here some of the mistakes we did, because entrepreneurship is about mistakes and improvements, and other mistakes and other improvements.
First, I can say that we expanded way too slow. Survival Isn’t Good Enough For Entrepreneurs says Ben Yoskovitz, and I don't think it was enough for us as well:
going in survival mode in the first 2 ye
What's next? 2007-06-07 15:37:52 I'm yet again making a little preview on the next articles I'm preparing.
Required reading for any entrepreneur wannabe. Today one of my former colleagues willing to start a new insurance business asked me what would be required reading before anything. And although my blog probably contains good information and references to other sources, it's not organized in a required reading list. So I will make one.
Another Small Business Entrepreneur interview, this time from UK. After having Becky McCray on board, I decided that the idea of having real entrepreneur interviews is too nice to be forgotten so I will create a new blog category just for it to make place for the next ones. And just to let you know, I'm preparing an interview with an UK entrepreneur that had a nice idea about online shops and put it to work
Also, I'm working on the next days of my small business story where I'm going to say what I managed to accomplish since day 4.
Small Business messages to the market 2007-06-06 13:45:52 Being a little boy I was learning Spanish with a private teacher (I then followed the Spanish High-school here in Bucharest). I don't remember much Spanish now, but I do remember one day of my lessons, because I said something that followed me through the years as a bad thing to say to someone.
Ok, so basically the Spanish teacher I had was quite excited in one weekend because she finished to translate a book into Romanian and also a little nervous because she needed a printing house to publish the book. As I knew she was a great translator, I wanted to say something great and somehow re-assure her that she will find a good printing house.
What I wanted to say was something like this:
"Don't worry, nowadays there are a lot of printing houses for every niche in the market, so I'm quite sure you will find one that is going to be interested in your translated book". Of course I was so young then and what came out was actually:
"Don't worry, nowadays printing houses are printing eve Read more:Small
, Business
, messages
, Small Business
Entrepreneur interviews 2007-06-16 14:08:25 Following the interview with Becky McCray I've came up with a new blog idea: Entrepreneur
-interviews.com
Entrepreneur-interviews.com is about finding out true stories about real life entrepreneur and their businesses. It’s about business ideas, funding, opportunities, putting together teams, starting up and failure. It’s the Entrepreneurs “reality-show”.
Entrepreneur-interviews.com is out there because business owners love to tell their stories and wanna be entrepreneurs are dying to hear how this works.
More on Entrepreneur-interviews
Small business finances 2007-06-24 16:09:24 I did some guest-posting on the Bootstrapme blog about small business finances
and why Bootstrappers should keep finances separate. It was my way of not agreeing with one of Dane Carson's articles about 20 Things Not to Do Before Starting A Business and especially with "Don’t get a bank account. Your personal banking account will work just fine if someone wants to write you a check, or if you need to pay for something."
While you can find plenty details I wrote on the Bootrapme blog about separating personal and business finances, below it's a complete overview and comments on Dane Carlson's article:
1.Don’t quit your day job.
=> agreed
2.Don’t incorporate. Seventy five percent of all businesses are sole proprietorships, and they already make money.
=> in Romania you are not allowed to do business without proper commercial registration. This includes registration for taxes, employment, Registry of commerce, etc. The lightest thing would be to become an author Read more:Small
Entrepreneurship and roles 2007-06-24 15:40:04 While there are plenty of books explaining the roles
in an organization I'm not sure what to say about the entrepreneurs. Ok so for a business we have the gatekeeper, the adviser, etc, etc but the entrepreneur can only be and have one role to cover all needs.
I think we can strip down things to 2 major roles/actions that actually define 2 entrepreneur types:
Keeping things at the normality level
Improving and getting performance
First of all, people in general are afraid of changes and do whatever they can to keep things as they "should be", striving for ... "normality". I assume most of the things we do in life are done to keep up with society rules - we dress up certain ways, we talk, act and behave as the society tells us to do. Entrepreneurs do the same. They spend really a lot of time to comply. They should comply with local laws, commercial laws, and all sorts of rules. So we can surely say that entrepreneurs have a role and do actions of keeping things under control, ma Read more:Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs get a different kind of reward 2007-07-05 23:47:48 If you worked on a management position at your 9 to 5 job before taking the entrepreneurship path, then you know how difficult and important is to reward
your employees and keep them happy for the work they do. And you probably been rewarded by your bosses as well, either with money, either with something else that was important for you.
Now, starting entrepreneurship day one, getting rewards is...zero, zilch, nada! No matter how hard you work, how many hours in the night you spend working and how many efforts you put in, there is nobody giving you rewards. And, we, entrepreneurs, kind of forget rewarding ourselves.
And that's because we do a lot of daydreaming: we don't go to holidays, we don't sleep well at night, every penny goes into developing the business, and every free hour is a good moment to send that important e-mail.
But we do get a different
kind of reward. Let's talk a little about Select Limousine Service in Chicago area. It says on the site "Select Limousine Serv Read more:Entrepreneurs
I've attended Bob Walsh's presentation on Blogging at SIC 2007-07-20 12:21:41 While I was at the 2007 Shareware Industry Conference in Denver, Colorado, I got the chance to shake hands with Bob Walsh
, the author of "Clear Blogging
: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them". While I was exchanging e-mails with Bob since some time now, it was really wonderful talking with a person that wrote a book about blogging. I mean you don't get to talk everyday with industry gurus...
I also attended Bob's presentation
on how and why blogs are good for small business just like mine. Bob says in one interview he gave to Avangate: "a good blog is easily the single best marketing activity they can invest their time in because by conversing on the net about the problems people have that their software addresses they demonstrate their expertise, build their online reputation, connect with other people interested in solving that problem (aka, customers) and play to their strengths."
Maybe someday I will get to write my own book?
I speak "Russian English" 2007-07-20 00:17:15 If you are reading my blog I'm sure you have already noticed some language particularities that place my writings as belonging to Eastern Europe. I mean I know from my experience working with USA people that they find our English
a little strange, but never realized is so obvious until I actually got in Denver Colorado and people started to put me in the "Eastern European" category immediately after my first phrase.
English is really a great tool if you do business elsewhere than your own country, but because so many "foreign" people speak
s English is also probably the most misused language on Earth. We have "French English", we have "Russian
English", we have "Indian English" or "Asian English". The bad part is when people start putting you in categories from the way you speak, and not all the categories are so good.
If you are classified in the "Wrong category" like Eastern European, it affects your Business. I mean...lets say you are from USA and some guy calls your office and tr
Other small business entrepreneur blogs 2007-07-21 06:04:50 I think I've said this before, blogging really gives me the chance to get in contact with interesting people, making the World a much smaller place. This is how Steven Sesar approached me, saying he runs a blog on "Tales of an entrepreneur wannabe". Had a quick look and decided is a good addition to my "Knowledge resource category".
I think he has one of the regular worries of any entrepreneur wanna be: waiting for an idea to happen: "I am a Los Angeles native who more than anything else has wanted to own and manage his own company, though still has yet to find the idea for which I am willing to commit my heart and soul."
Now, USA is really the place where Web 2.0 is really happening, the place where most IT ideas are waiting to start. That's why I found his blog to be an interesting collection of stories, interviews and tales about new ventures in the post 2000 internet bust era.
I especially enjoyed his story about starting to work with his friend on ideas about "an entrepreneur
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