What an MBA Won’t Teach About Starting a Business
There is much discussion about how beneficial an MBA education is for entrepreneurs starting a business. The debate is about whether the skills required for success as an entrepreneur can be taught and whether the current MBA curriculum allows its graduates to succeed in today’s business landscape. Entrepreneurs must decide whether to invest in a top Online MBA as a prerequisite for starting a business, or rather instead to invest that money directly into a new business.
According to the article, “Seven Essential Qualities of a Successful Entrepreneur” published in the Wall Street Journal, having a vision and being passionate about pursuing that vision are believed to be key requirements for entrepreneurial success. Given that most entrepreneurs accept this driving force as a critical component for entrepreneurs, the question germane to the MBA debate is whether you can teach a student how to think in an innovative manner and to come up with a new idea that they are willing to pursue with an intense and ongoing commitment. Considering the enormous commitment and sacrifice that most new companies require, if an entrepreneur does not make a business dream a top priority in the beginning, it will be very difficult to stick with it when the big challenges arrive.
Education Cannot Teach Passion or Innovation
Considering the large number of highly successful entrepreneurs without formal MBA training, a persuasive argument can be made that entrepreneurs do not need an MBA to succeed when they have a good idea and are willing to pursue it against all odds. Some of the better-known entrepreneurs who are recognized as high-profile contributors to society without an MBA include Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple computer is another entrepreneur that must be recognized as one of the most celebrated entrepreneurs without an advanced education. These visionaries created technologies that have directly impacted the lives of most people in technology-savvy cultures. The problem with MBAs is that its curriculum teaches students what’s worked for businesses in the past; it doesn’t teach them what being innovative and determined are.
People Skills
While many innovative entrepreneurs in the technology industry have not suffered from a lack of people skills, in many other industries this lack could prove a block to success. We’ve all heard the saying that it is not what you know, but whom you know that makes you successful. If this is true for most entrepreneurs, then it is easy to understand why so many people who are well liked do so well in business.
Networking is promoted as a plausible way to find business partners and key employees. An entrepreneur must be able to depend on talent and commitment to make up for a lack of other resources to compete. This is where leadership and charisma play a key role in recruiting the talent necessary for success.
Conclusion
The debate will continue about whether an entrepreneur needs an MBA to succeed as an entrepreneur. Some questions that any new entrepreneur must consider is whether they can commit for the long-term, and whether they can withstand the pressure to compete under duress. Some of the considerations to think about are financial demands and a support system. Entrepreneurs’ challenges are often not limited to business competition, but also include family concerns. Having a spouse or partner who is also committed to an entrepreneur’s dream can make a substantial difference in whether an entrepreneur succeeds.
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4 Lessons Learned From Mistakes of Internet Past
The speculative bubble of “dot com” era was a period of rapid growth followed by a significant decline between 1995 and 2000. Many of the companies that prospered during this brief explosion relied on venture capital and initial public offerings to cover expenses.
They valued growth over profitability which later led to significant problems. Companies soared to incredible heights on paper with little actual value, leading to numerous repercussions in the financial world. Even at the time, one didn’t need a PhD to see the problems in online businesses, Companies of today may learn from the mistakes of this time.
1. Using IPOs and Venture Capital for Expenses
Many successful businesses such as Amazon.com, Google, and eBay survived the dot com era. Amazon and Google in particular relied on IPOs and venture capital for expenses, used the free spending strategy, and valued growth over making a profit in the first few years as their stocks soared exponentially. During this time, the founders mostly had no income. Many people profited from this speculative wealth that ultimately led to crash. Educated investors knew the crash was coming and thus profited from the companies’ growth and got out before the stock market crashed. Companies should have a plan for profitability and capital for expenses to avoid this pitfall.
2. Failure to Develop a Solid Business Plan
Businesses should develop plans that include strategies to become profitable within a short time. Investors are more astute since the ’90s’ dot com bubble, and are less likely to invest in companies when the stock prices are overvalued and the fundamentals aren’t favorable. Profitable business plans should include a strategy for marketing, sales, product development, and asset acquisition. Without both long-term and short-term strategy, businesses will fall victim to using the Internet for growth with little concern for their sustainability.
Dot-com-era business all had similar business plans essentially promoting a monopoly in each particular sector. Ultimately, this strategy would allow only one company to emerge successfully and the majority would fail. Moreover, some businesses’ ideas simply didn’t pan out. For instance, online retailers didn’t consider that huge shipping costs would deter users. Their business plans and models were not well researched and didn’t anticipate potential problems that e-commerce would bring, but just relied on the momentum of the public to propel the ideas.
Businesses with novel ideas that will change the way people interact in the world should recognize that these ideas are not developed instantaneously. Many companies have become seemingly successful overnight, but other vital events happened to prepare them for this success. Every company should recognize that not every idea will be profitable immediately.
3. Free Spending
Venture capitalists were freely giving money to business owners, and business owners were freely spending it in turn. They purchased lavish items for the business, took expensive trips, and stayed in luxury hotels. Executives were paid in stock options as opposed to cash. Many of the founders became instant millionaires after the IPO, then founded more dot com companies to repeat the cycle of empty explosive growth. Businesses need to spend prudently until they become actually, sustainably profitable.
4. Predictive Tools Not Used
Many business owners mistakenly expected the adoption of the Internet to be immediate. Current and historical data should be gathered and analyzed to avoid similar mistakes with other new technologies. Numerous tools have been developed since that time to help investors and business owners analyze the market. With these tools, business owners may better be able to identify ideas that don’t have the potential for longevity.
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These are just a few problems that occurred during the dot com era that were detrimental to companies. From the business plan designed to create monopoly to the lack of use of predictive tools for success, the dot com era was plagued with mistakes. The self-made millionaires of the time might disagree, as well as companies such as eBay, Amazon, and Google that survived the crash and continued as internet giants. They are, though, the exceptions, not the rule. In general, businesses should adhere to basic models and principles with proven success rates, even if a lucky few have managed to shoot the moon.
About the Author: Elaine Hirsch is kind of a jack-of-all-interests, from education and
history to medicine and videogames. This makes it difficult to choose just one life path, so she is currently working as a writer for various education-related sites and writing about all these things
instead.
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5 Lessons for Brick and Mortar Small Businesses from a Website Perspective: Is Your Store Readable?
First impressions count. That is an accepted maxim and there is truth to it. Within the first 7 seconds, what will your visitors see? Is your store “readable”?
I bet you think I’m talking about an online store, but I’m not. I am talking about bricks and mortar, real world storefronts, where you and I shop. Or at least we used to. I just recently worked on a hyperlocal small business project where I walked and visited along the main street of two towns near me. I visited 70-plus retail stores, shot 170 short videos (1.89 Gigabytes worth), had 10 great conversations with employees or owners, experienced 2 epic fails, and discovered 21 takeaways for small business owners based on my usual online work combined with this Main Street walk.
My motivation for doing this project came from hearing stats that approximately 50 percent of small businesses don’t have a website and I would argue that a higher number have a useless website or online presence. Please print this (or my 21 Tips from link below) and share it with a local merchant when you don’t see them mentioning their online efforts in their retail stores. Help your neighborhood store.
1. First impressions do count
Have you really thought about what happens when someone walks into your store? I mean, from a sales perspective, what will they do? What do they do? Here are a few thoughts:
- Where do your eyes go when you walk in the store? Better, recruit 20 customers and buy them lunch after they help you sort this out.
- Does the store seem inviting?
- Do you engage the senses? Is there music playing? A video playing with people using your products? A touchscreen computer that customers can use to find things in your store?
- Is there one thing that captures attention and captivates your walk-in customers and that they head straight for, every time?
2. Is your navigation easily understandable?
What am I talking about here – there’s no navigation in a retail store… Really? Signage is navigation.
- Is it compelling, fun, energizing?
- Do you have a location in your store that shouts “Contact Us” or “About Us”?
- Do you have testimonials or quotes hanging around?
- Awards you’ve won? Client list? Customer success stories?
3. Does your store have a lead capture mechanism?
This goes with the Contact Us comment in point 2, but do you think about using the point of sale to capture email addresses or cell phone numbers for a text messaging campaign? Do you offer coupons or special deals? I think your customers and prospects probably want to know about them and are probably willing to give you their contact info.
4. Readability
Can they read the signs you have up or are they in some frilly, elegant, fancy font that people can only read them when they are five inches away. You may think I’m kidding. We drive at 80 miles per hour and we usually have a cell phone in our hands; the same brain speed continues when we enter your store. Put up road signs so large that the visually impaired can read them from outside the store. Okay, so I’m laying the vegemite on a bit thick here and you only need a thin spread to get the flavor.
5. How many visitors did you have last month? How many purchased something?
I have yet to see a store besides Costco count people when they come in. Why not? Do you think they are doing anything with that data? I think so, but I don’t know for sure. Doesn’t matter. You could. It might not be pretty or pleasant, but you could start asking yourself hard questions about how many come in, how many that come in actually purchase, how many come in and leave without buying? The “ouch” moment could lead to an “Aha” moment and more sales.
In Conclusion
Small business is the lifeblood of our world economies. If you believe that, don’t just shop and buy local, encourage your local merchants to step up their intensity, get in the social stream, and make a difference in their own sales success. If 50 percent of small businesses don’t have an active, useful, or profitable website, many will start to wilt and die. Some will survive without an online presence, to be sure.
Remember Smokey the Bear with “you can prevent forest fires”? Well, you can prevent small business failures. Are your local merchants making their stores readable? Is the first impression a strong one? This isn’t just friendly advice you’ll share with a local merchant. Advice like this is what will keep them in business and on Main Street and that’s what we all want: Diversity and energy and success for retailers and other small businesses because they help drive our economies.
About the Author: TJ McCue is the founder of SalesKickstart.com, which helps small businesses increase website traffic and sales. He visited 73 stores over two days in November 2010 and wrote 21 Takeaways to Save Small Businesses on Main Street at his blog.
Photo Credit: esparta
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Digg, Gap, and The Fad Syndrome
Everyone knows the classic business story of Coca-Cola and their decision to make “New Coke.” The company decided that their product could be improved, changed it, then responded to the public outcry and went back its Classic formula.
Modern Day “New Coke”
In the past month, several companies attempted to update their own products. What happened next is a great example of what is increasingly known as “The Fad Syndrome.”
Digg’s New Design
First, the popular website Digg unveiled a new design. Their website was updated to reduce the influence so called “Power Users” had and to promote social network use.
Updated Gap
Gap released a new logo, the word Gap with a small blue box on the upper right corner. The idea was to be more hip and capture the new spirit of consumers.
Twitter Makeover
Twitter also changed its approach recently. It changed the layout of its site to include more content, increase user participation, and even adopt a “Golden Mean” circular structure.
What happened in each of these cases?
Digg’s traffic dropped by more than 25%. Strong reaction by users forced the CEO to apologize and decide to reverse some of the changes.
Massive outcry forced Gap to change its decision and return to the old logo almost immediately after decision to change.
But Twitter’s changes were accepted with little reaction and have been veiled out to all of its hundreds of millions of users.
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Why was Twitter able to undergo a significant change while Digg and Gap were forced to reverse themselves, much like Coca-Cola?
The answer lies in the phenomena of “The Fad Syndrome.”
This syndrome is what happens when a company is tempted to follow a fad and in doing so abandons its core values.
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Successful companies form strong emotional bonds with their customers and users. When you use a product repeatedly, you attach emotions and ways of using it to it. Companies, however, don’t always realize the value of this attachment.
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It’s taken for granted and is not a growth area anymore. Sometimes they see a market trend and feel like they are outdated or need to change to meet it.
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When they do so by changing the elements that made them successful in the beginning, this can outrage loyal users.
A Clear Lesson
What Twitter did right was its change did not fundamentally alter the user experience or abandon any principles/branding that had made it popular. In contrast, Digg redesign insulted its most loyal users, and Gap’s change abandoned an iconic logo with great emotional significance.
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The lesson is clear. Avoid “The Fad Syndrome” by recognizing what components to your company are important to your users. If you do feel the need to change something, make sure to minimize that which could evoke strong emotional reaction from loyal users.
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About the Author: David Gurevich has three years of SEO experience and a case study is taught at a popular Ivy League business course on a website he started. At the moment, he is working on a book on business, possibly to be cowritten with a founder of the #1 MBA program for women.
Buzz him up at dg_writing@hotmail.com with any questions or thoughts you may have.”
Photo Credit: Sabrina Campagna
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5 Lessons Learned From My First Business
It seems like a lifetime ago that I started my first business, maybe that’s because it is. I learned a lot of lessons from that first venture, most about what not to do.
My First Business
The year was 1984 and I was 7 years old. I was the sole proprietor of a newspaper distribution company, call it old media, but newspapers were my game.
This was back in old days, before the internet, when people would get their news by reading words written on actual pages – don’t laugh, but many people would actually pay to get their news this way, including my parents.
At 7 I knew enough to know that I wanted some money, I was sure if I could get my hands on some cash I’d be out on my own in a couple years living the good life.
I also knew that these things called “papers” would stack up for a couple weeks before my parents finally took them to the trash.
An Idea is Born
I thought if my parents were reading these papers, and paying for them, the neighbors probably were reading them too, but maybe not all the neighbors.
I asked my mom how much a paper cost, then asked her if I could have the old ones, she said ”you can have the old ones, but don’t go leavin’em laying around the house!”
My business is born! I would go door to door with the old papers my parents had and see if I could sell them for less than a new paper to any of the neighbors.
I thought maybe they didn’t get the paper so would happily pay for mine, or possibly they missed an issue and would want to catch up. If they didn’t have this thing called a “subscription”, heck maybe I could sell them a paper everyday.
My distribution mechanism was simple. I loaded up the papers in a duffel bag and headed out, knocking on every door within the neighborhood within my limits.
At that time I had boundaries set by my parents that I wasn’t supposed to cross. I was the paper czar of nearly 5 square blocks – I was in business!
5 Lessons Learned from My First Business
So that is how I spent everyday after school the two weeks I was in business. Knocking on doors trying to sell yesterday’s paper (or sometimes yester-weeks paper).
As I think about it now, it seems silly. As adults, we all can spot the flaws in my thinking, and even though I wouldn’t try something similar today – I made money!
Being able to make money selling old news taught me a lot about business, here’s five things I learned:
Lesson #1: When You’re in Business People Buy You as Much as Your Product
I was a moderately cute kid, with tons of ambition, and nothing but confidence in my paper business. When I talked to people at their door step they felt that. When they bought a paper from me, they were buying me, not the news that happened 6 days ago.
This lesson is as applicable today as it was then. Although we may not all be fresh faced kids anymore, people will sense when you are passionate, confident, and believe in what you are doing – and that’s what they’ll be buying a good portion of the time.
Lesson #2: Great Entrepreneurs Think on Their Feet
I learned quickly that in order to sell these papers, that weren’t as desirable as I thought they’d be, I better have answers to their questions – which mean’t thinking on my feet.
I remember on that first day being asked, “Why would I want to buy yesterdays paper, that stuff’s already happened”…I replied with “Well, today’s paper is filled with stuff that already happened too, but mine’s cheaper.” He bought a paper. My mom said I was being a smart aleck, I politely disagreed.
If you want to be a great entrepreneur you need the ability to think quickly on your feet. Responding to demands, making quick (good) decisions, and dealing with the numerous curveballs are essential to success.
Lesson #3: Competing on Price Alone is a Tough Game
My only selling point, and the only way I could sell even one of the old papers was to give discounts. At the time I thought this was shrewd, now I think it’s dangerous.
I had no competition in my neighborhood, and probably never would have selling old news, but what if another 7 year old (or a super bright 6 year old) had of come up with the same idea? We’re both knocking on doors, how do we compete with each other? Most likely price, which means it wouldn’t be too long until the pennies I was making didn’t justify the trouble, and I’d have a hard time making it up on volume.
Same goes later in life. You may be the only game in town now, but what happens when you’re not. Will you be competing on price alone, or do you bring something to the table your competitors don’t?
Lesson #4: Think About Scale Early in the Startup
I gave this absolutely no thought. I just wanted to sell some papers, and beat myself ragged going door to door I guess. If this venture had been a huge success I would have had no way to meet the demand – shoot, my parents only let me go about 5 square blocks, I would have been sunk right there.
The lesson here is that early on begin to think about how you may scale up if you’re business becomes successful. How will you reach more people? Who will do the additional work? Can you scale? If you charge per hour, there are only so many in a day – how do you get more revenue without raising your price? If you sell a physical item, how many can you get and how can you distribute to more people? Just ask yourself these questions early, and prepare for growth going in.
Lesson#5: It’s Hard to Overcome a Flawed Business Model
We can all see the problems with my business model. Yeah, I sold some papers, but long term the flaws were going to bring my business down. If you’re not going into a venture on solid business foundations, you’re house is going to start leaning, and eventually fall over.
The Long Defunct Newspaper Distribution Company
I’ve been out of the newspaper distribution business now 25 years, but some of the lessons I learned back then are still with me today.
The real lesson in all of this is it doesn’t matter if you sell newspapers when you’re 7, lemonade when you are 10, or run a multimillion dollar company when you’re 40, the fundamentals of business don’t change.
Keep moving forward while learning from the past and you should be okay. And for anybody thinking about it, I can’t suggest you getting into the newspaper distribution business!
Photo Credit: Meanest Indian
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5 Things They Don’t Teach You in Business School About Being an Entrepreneur
Ah, the life of an entrepreneur. Come up with a business idea, write your business plan, line up a bunch of venture funding, and retire to a private island a few short years later when you go public.
If you’re heading off to business school right now, reading this on your iPhone, dreaming of buying your own island – sorry for the ice bath of reality I’m about to dump on you.
5 Things They Don’t Teach you in Business School About Being an Entrepreneur
1. You’re more likely to make a living than make the Forbes 500
Most entrepreneurs end up making a living, and some make a really nice living doing what they love. Very few end up buying their own island, they’re too busy saving for their kids college and making the mortgage payments.
2. There is no money line to get in
There are a lot of you’s out there competing over very scarce resources. But don’t think you’ll just get in line and pick up your check. You’ll definitely need to be the cream of the crop to attract venture funding. More realistically, look for alternative sources of funds.
3. It’s more about you than your plan
Business success has more to do with you than anything else. The best plans mean nothing in the hands of the wrong person.
4. You’re in sales, whether you think so or not
Every business on the planet is selling something. You’re either selling a product, idea, or yourself…learn sales fundamentals, and apply them to everything you’re doing.
5. You’re going to fail
Yep, you will fail. You will probably fail multiple times. If that concerns you, pick another path for your life. If it doesn’t concern you that you will be an utter failure at some point, good – with every failure you get one step closer to success, cliché but true.
Conclusion
Being an entrepreneur can be the most satisfying thing you’ll do with your life. Understand there’s a lot more to it than supply/demand curves, business plans, target markets, or financial projections.
Most of it won’t be taught in Business 101, it’ll just be up to you – but that’s part of being an entrepreneur.
I’ll let you get back to summer vacation now…
Photo credit: losmininos
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10 Business Lessons Learned
Last week we went into great detail about some of the things you should think about when deciding to start your own business.
The last post of the series was 10 Early Signs Your Business is Heading for Danger, and How to Avoid It, which was essentially a laundry list of things I’ve done wrong over the years and how you can avoid them.
More Business Lessons Learned
In sticking with that theme a little while longer, here’s another great list of 10 business lessons learned. Some of my favorites from the presentation include:
1. Differentiate yourself – like you differentiate your product
2. Business is about cycles (and luck)
3. You can’t be a great leader unless you’ve been through a crisis
4. Some of your best learning will come from your worst boss
5. Hire people different than you, and capable in many more things
I highly recommend you check out the presentation for the other 5 business lessons learned.
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Four Essential Business Lessons
We recently completed our first $100 competition here at SmallBizBee.com, and while giving out money is fun, I think what we can all learn from the exercise and then apply to our businesses is even more valuable.
The rules were simple, submit one 500 word (or more) article that was related in some way to small business or entrepreneurship, we run it on the site for 24 hours, and whoever got the most page views in that time wins. What could we possibly learn about business from a competition so remedial? Actually, quite a lot!
Business Skills Learned from our $100 Competition
1. You have to grab it if you want it
Essentially this competition was a marketing competition. While the quality of content provided was quite good, it was not a factor used in deciding who the winner was. As long as your content was on target for subject matter, you were entered, and stood just as good of chance of winning as any other entrant. Since the competition was decided by who got the most page views, how you marketed your content made all the difference. In essence all you had to do to win our $100 was to grab it…if you really wanted the money, you just had to take it by using every outlet available to get people to our web site and click on your article. Leveraging all of your social networks, and driving them to our website could have made you $100 richer. What wasn’t going to make you richer was hoping you had done enough to get people to our website and click your article. The same holds true in business. If you want customers, you have to grab them. You need to use all advertising and marketing outlets available to you to get customers to do what you want them to do. It’s not enough to create a great product, or launch a great service and then sit back and hope that customers will come. Real life is nothing like the movie “Field of Dreams”, if you build it there is nothing to guarantee they will come.
2. Don’t set parameters for yourself that don’t actually exist
Our lives are naturally filled with structure and parameters so it’s no wonder that thinking trickles over to our businesses. The same held true in this contest, and let me give you an example. In the competition we gave no parameters for how you could market your content, yet when I asked one entrant if they had sent anything out to their Twitter followers letting them know their article was live they first responded with “I didn’t know you could do that”. We had never said they couldn’t yet they automatically put parameters around what was an okay method of getting the word out.They were not alone, I think a few of our entrants felt the same way and as such didn’t market their article to the fullest because they had set parameters for themselves as to what was acceptable that we had never considered. When you set artificial parameters for yourself in business it could end up costing you a lot more than $100. Some parameters are naturally set in stone such as legal or moral constraints, but outside of that don’t automatically assume you cannot do something until you’ve investigated whether or not you can or can’t. I’ll give you another example. When myself and a business partner were promoting an event last year I wanted to had out informational fliers during a festival downtown that was advertising our event. I wasn’t planning on setting up a booth, just milling around with the crowd, handing out information, and talking to as many people as I could. My business partner immediately started in with “I don’t think we can hand out fliers there, the organizers would frown on that since they would probably want us paying for a both at the event. It might even be trespassing or something…” He went on, and on explaining why we couldn’t market in that fashion without ever checking into it. Long story short, I called the organizers, told them what we were up to, and they had absolutely no problems with it. We made some great contacts that day, and it would have never happened had I let my partner’s imaginary parameters become reality.
3. Always analyze the value exchange
In our contest, as well as in business, there was a value exchange. What were you being asked to give, and what were you getting in return? Being able to analyze the value exchange quickly and efficiently is a critical skill, albeit a learned one, that will help you make value added decisions for your business. Basically we were offering $100 for only 500 words. Anyone who writes content for a living knows that’s a pretty good deal (works out to .20 per word), and should be able to figure out the value exchange is in their favor quite quickly. Another way to look at it was, how quickly can you write a 500 word article? If it takes you 1/2 hour and you win, we’ve just paid you $200 per hour for your time. Again, most of us would be willing to work for $200 per hour. In these examples the value exchange was easily analyzed and it was apparent that it was in favor of the author. Where the value exchange gets muddier is when you begin to look at the opportunity cost of writing the article versus what you could have been doing instead. Let’s say you would have needed to take an hour of your day to write our article and that time could have spent with a client instead. They pay you $100 per hour, so by writing our article you stand to gain $100 but you loose the $100 you would have billed out. It should only take you a second to figure out a guaranteed $100 from the client is much better than a chance at $100 by working with us. Getting good, and quick, at analyzing value exchanges is a principle you’d be wise to learn, as you and your business are faced with these decisions countless times a day.
4. Don’t let yourself stand in your way
This dovetails somewhat with #2, but deals more with what you think yourself capable of. Six people in total submitted articles to this competition, which means off the top each had a 16% chance at $100. If you were given a free spin on a wheel for a $100 and you had a 1 in 6 chance of winning, would you? I think all of us would jump at that chance, yet what held most people back in this competition was not the odds of winning it was what they thought they were capable of. It was as if they didn’t think they had the strength to spin the wheel. From those that didn’t enter I heard comments such as “I was going to enter, but I don’t think I’d win”, or “I’m not a very good writer so I didn’t submit anything”. We already determined this was a marketing competition more than a writing competition, so the(perceived) skill as a writer shouldn’t have held anyone back. The number one reason that people didn’t enter this contest was due to what they thought they were capable of, more than anything based in reality. Even in a medium as anonymous as the Internet the fear of failing, not winning a competition that they didn’t pay any money to enter, and being “judged” by people they’d never meet, made not trying at all seem like the viable road to take. Make sense? It doesn’t to me, and it shouldn’t to you, especially if you want to run a successful business. Get out of your own way, ignore all the prejudices you have against yourself, and remove thoughts from your head about what you are capable of if you want to start and grow a business in a big time way.
Summary
We ran a very simple contest, and the above business lessons we learned are themselves worth the $100 we gave away. What we hope to illustrate in this post is not only what the key lessons were from our little competition, but that you can learn a lot about yourself and become better in business by analyzing and reviewing the endeavors you choose to participate in and those that you don’t. We’ll run many more competitions here at Smallbizbee.com, and each will have a focus that will lead the participants to success. The strategy with this one happened to be marketing and networking in order to drive behavior, and we promise the others will be as straightforward. What we won’t do is lead you to the right (winning) strategy, but we will be sharing the business lessons learned after the fact, which should prepare you not only to win the next competition but to be a better business owner as well.
