It’s not too late to shop local

There is less than a week until Christmas! Are you still trying to find the perfect gift for your Secret Santa? When it comes to holiday shopping, I tend to leave things to the last minute. It’s NOT procrastination. I actually enjoy shopping during the week before Christmas. I like getting out into the neighborhood, visiting independently owned shops, and enjoying the festive (and sometimes frantic) mood on the street.

There are many reasons to support locally owned businesses and you can do some of your shopping right from home…even from small and micro businesses. I love supporting PTA colleagues, clients and entrepreneurship students when I shop – these are local business owners who sell great products and services, operate with integrity, and provide excellent customer service.

Here are a few local gift ideas from my list:

Buy fashionable, fair trade products from around the world from 12 Small Things.
Give an aspiring cook a class gift certificate from The City Kitchen.
Find beautiful handcrafted jewelry for a special someone from Corey Egan or Alicia Van Fleteren
Discover the perfect outfit or toy for a child at Fiddlesticks, or
Get great women’s running apparel and gear from See Jane Run.

Since my first small business was a food business (the cheese store Cheshire Cheese) and my next small business was a café (Mad Hatter Tea), my gift-giving always includes food… either homemade or locally bought. We are blessed in San Francisco to be surrounded by small businesses making amazing food. How about a box of chocolates from Socola Chocolatiers or Belinda Chocolates, a jam club membership or jam cookbook from Blue Chair Fruit Company, tea from T-We Tea, or plum pudding with brandy butter from Clairsquares? The possibilities are endless.

So, support your local businesses this season and let’s keep our holiday dollars in the local economy. Hit the streets (or go online) and share in the good feeling that your support will bring to local small businesses this year.

Social Enterprise on the Tibetan Plateau

Tibetan Social Enterprise Lab Fellows

This past month, twelve entrepreneurs from the Tibetan Plateau in Western China have been immersed in an intensive learning experience in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were selected as the first group of Fellows in a new program called the Tibetan Social Enterprise Lab. This program was created to help Tibetan entrepreneurs build their business skills and make connections with the Bay Area social enterprise community so that they can start or expand their own social enterprises on the Tibetan Plateau.

The Fellows spent their first two weeks on the Stanford campus attending classes, meeting with teachers and students, and developing their business models. Some have well-defined ideas and are in full business start-up mode, while others are at a very early stage, exploring the potential of social enterprise as an alternative to a charity giving model. They are starting product businesses –selling yak dairy products, solar cookers, baked goods, and traditional artisan products, and service businesses –providing digital medial skills training, eco-travel services or vocational training.

Sharon Miller, CEO of Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center connected me with the program, knowing of my long-standing interest in the Himalayan region and Tibetan culture. I got the chance to attend one of their mentor evenings on the Stanford campus, listening to the Fellows “pitch” their business ideas and sharing feedback in one of their “mastermind” sessions.

These young entrepreneurs face challenges unique to the Tibetan Plateau – including extreme weather conditions and limited local markets (one Fellow plans to start a farm-to-table farm business but must figure out how to get his products to the nearest farmers’ market—a seven-hour drive away). Yet as I learned about their ideas and projects, it was clear that they also face some of the same challenges as entrepreneurs everywhere.

Fellows visiting La Cocina

During the last two weeks of the program, the Fellows visited Bay Area small businesses and social enterprises. I gave them a tour and overview of Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and we talked about the Renaissance approach—a business planning model within a supportive environment, with teams of advisers and peer-to-peer support. We discussed some of the many Renaissance graduate food and product businesses where they might seek direction and mentorship, such as Cheryl Burr of Pinkie’s Bakery, Judi Henderson of Mannequin Madness, Jackie Huang of Woolbuddy, Eloisa Serrano of Bay Thread, Heidi Gibson of The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen and Neil Gottlieb of Three Twins Ice Cream. We specifically talked about the importance of getting hands-on advice and specific direction from other small business owners. The Fellows then visited Renaissance graduates Laurie Kanes of 12 Small Things and Rachel Saunders of Blue Chair Fruit Company, as well as La Cocina and other Bay Area social enterprises.

I believe that mentorship and support from other business owners is key to small business success and is just as important as training in business planning, budgeting, evaluation metrics, and market research. By hearing success stories and lessons learned directly from other business owners, and getting questions answered by people who operate businesses every day, new entrepreneurs can tangibly see what it means to start and run a small business.

As so many of us know, being a small business owner is a job like no other. It can be incredibly rewarding but also potentially isolating. In this virtual age, though, these Tibetan entrepreneurs have the opportunity to create lasting relationships with the people they met during the program and most importantly with each other. With peer support from the Fellowship cohort and support from advisers (ideally other small business owners), these young entrepreneurs will be able to stay focused on their goals, put their plans into action, and ultimately create positive economic and social change in their communities. I look forward to staying in touch with all of them!

Need motivation? Set a deadline!

Thanks to our colleagues, clients, students, friends, and friends-of-friends, PTA got the 250 votes (and more!) needed to make it to the second round of the Chase Mission Main Streets grant process.

Encouraged by a few colleagues, we decided to apply for a grant to expand expert mentoring. We got a late start and had only two weeks before the application deadline to collect the votes required. Compared to a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign, this was a minor recruitment effort (as we just needed votes, not cash), but it was still an all-consuming process.

It seemed like a daunting task at first, but in the end it was a great experience… and we managed to achieve our goal two days ahead of schedule!

Reaching out to our wider community was energizing. It was a great opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, clients and students and engage around a common goal. We were inspired by the support and encouragement for PTA and our mentorship idea.

Though we often curse them… aren’t deadlines great? We had been considering a train-the-trainer mentorship idea for some time but needed an application deadline—and the requirement that we get our community’s votes behind us—to really focus and design a business action plan.

The pressure of a deadline, especially one that is publicly declared and right around the corner is a powerful motivator. Kickstarter has found that campaigns longer than 60 days in length are rarely successful. The urgency of an immediate deadline pushes us to make things happen.

The risk of disappointment or disapproval from others also motivates us to perform. Should you bet your friends that you’ll run through the streets naked if you don’t meet your deadline? Most people don’t need that level of humiliation or a public contest to act. Sharing a goal with a business advisor, teacher or cohort of small business owners can be a great way to take action. What’s important is finding someone you can be accountable to and who will encourage you to follow through and make something happen.

Though the likelihood of winning a Mission Main Street grant is rather slim (only 12 businesses will win out of what may be 100,000 or more applicants), the process has motivated us to expand our consulting and teaching offerings. Thanks to this contest, we are now developing a mentoring prototype and pilot program for 2014.

What motivates you?

Farewell to the Guru of Guerilla Marketing

Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of “guerrilla marketing,” passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 80. I didn’t know him personally but his 1983 book Guerrilla Marketing—geared to small business owners and entrepreneurs—was inspirational to me.

Levinson was quite a character. Often dressed in camouflage, he was passionate about his approach to marketing and loved to engage with people through his articles, books, talks and training programs.

Instead of a big marketing budget, Levinson proposed that small business owners could use low-cost and unconventional means to create buzz and promote their products and a services. The essence of guerrilla marketing, according to Levinson, was “achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.”

“Guerrilla marketing” is now part of the popular lexicon and many of his techniques have become the way to market a business, both small and large alike.

I’ve shared many of his marketing tips with students over the years. Key guerilla marketing principles include:

Concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month, instead of new customers
Aim for more referrals and more (and larger) transactions with existing customers
Forget about the competition and concentrate on cooperating with other businesses
Use current technology as a tool to build your business
Aim messages at individuals or small groups (the smaller the better)
Focus on gaining consent to send more information rather than trying to make a sale
Measure your business by profits not sales

In an interview from 2011, Levinson said that guerilla marketing is the opposite of what people think it is. “It’s not shocking or ambushing and it does not result in instant anything… it’s oriented to the client. And it does not work instantly because guerrilla marketers realize, ‘I’ve got to build up a sense of confidence, and I can’t do that immediately.’”

Levinson believed that a solid plan, committing to that plan, and patience are key to effective and successful marketing campaigns. “The graveyards of marketing are littered with terrific campaigns that were abandoned too soon. People think ‘This should work in a hurry,’ but marketing doesn’t. And if you think it does, you’re going to be in for a life of grief, frustration and Tums because it doesn’t work instantly; it does, however, work eventually if you commit to it.”

According to Levinson, patience is especially important when using social media as a marketing tool. People “get a Facebook account and become active on Twitter. They think that social media will work for them. It doesn’t work in a hurry. But it’s so uncomplicated if you go about it in the right way, which is not expensive. The key element is patience, because the best-crafted marketing doesn’t work instantly.”

What marketing approach has been most successful with your business?

Here is a video of Jay from a few years back answering the question, “What is Guerrilla Marketing?”

A Birthday Reflection

No matter what we do, we get older every year! Our birthdays remind us of this fact and we can’t ignore it. It’s my birthday weekend so thinking about change is particularly on my mind.

Early birthdays came with exciting milestones: being old enough to stay out late, attend a concert without parental supervision, borrow and drive the family car, and finally get to vote. Now that I’m at an age when I get carded for senior discounts and asked to join AARP, birthdays take on a different kind of significance. Who is speeding time up?

I think we should celebrate birthdays at every age. There are all kinds of ways to do that — throwing a party, going out to eat with friends, or just sleeping in.

For a small business owner, it’s hard to take time off when the demands of the business are all consuming. Yet we must take a break …and once a year is a minimum! We need to find ways to create balance in our lives and birthdays are a great excuse and opportunity for reflection and celebration.

A Day For Myself
I have made it an annual tradition to not work on my birthday. If my birthday falls on a weekday, I do not schedule clients or teach classes. I spend at least part of the day alone, out of doors and, if possible, out of the city. I’ll go on a hike in coastal Marin, meditate at Spirit Rock or at the Green Gulch Zen Center, or just find a way to sit still somewhere. I reflect on the past year and think about the year ahead and what is most important in my business and in my life.

Getting away from my daily routine is often how I get the chance to think creatively as a business owner. On this annual birthday “retreat” I slow down to reflect on my life, my health, my family and every blessing no matter how small. This day of contemplation with fresh air and exercise does a lot for my spirit and helps me to recharge for the year ahead.

Celebrating the Season
My dear friend Cece, who has now passed, introduced me to the idea of a “birthday season” over a decade ago. It started for her by accident. Her many friends would call to take her out for breakfast, brunch or dinner on her birthday and she would get fully booked up for the day. Then she started making plans for the day before her birthday and the day after. Finally, she announced with great joy and laughter that she was officially celebrating her birthday season, which started 10 days before the date and continued for 10 days afterwards. She invented her own way to celebrate so that she could connect individually with all the people she cared about.

I love this idea and have enjoyed extending my birthday into a “birthday season”. I have introduced this to others and have implemented the concept for family members’ and close friends’ birthdays, too.

A New Tradition
My first grandson was born a year ago and it now makes the month of October even more significant to me. I’ve decided to start a new birthday tradition—spending special one-on-one time with him. This year it may be only a swing at the park but next year he’ll be ready to run the bases!

What is your birthday tradition?

In the Neighborhood

Every year most neighborhoods in San Francisco celebrate their uniqueness with a block party, a festival or a street fair. It is a safe and happy time for residents and local businesses to come together in the “center of town” and hear music, meet neighbors, sign up for nursery schools, discuss political campaigns and just feel involved and connected with others in the “hood”. (You know what I mean if you have ever attended one.)

poster by local artist Peter Linenthal

The Festival on Potrero Hill was like that for many of us. Daniel Webster School organized the play areas, face painting and the petting zoo, Goat Hill Pizza (and its active owner Phillip DeAndrade) sold great pizzas, Andy and Olia from Skool Restaurant had food for everyone who came by, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue was breaking hearts with their sweet dogs for adoption, and Lester and Kayren, owners of The Good Life Grocery set up a “farmers’ market” in front of their store with a large tent that created welcome shade.

As a board member of the Potrero Dogpatch Merchants Association, I had fun “working” the PDMA table — handing out the Association’s new directory of over 160 active business members, and talking with local small business owners and residents about PDMA’s role in the neighborhood. It was great, as always, to see Supervisor Malia Cohen, (a past student of mine at Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center) in attendance and actively involved in the issues relevant to the neighborhood and her District 10 constituents.

Congratulations to Keith Goldstein and his volunteers for creating and managing such a great event – every year – all to benefit the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House.

Wisdom from Melissa Joy Manning

Design Sponge recently posted a great profile of jewelry designer Melissa Joy Manning, a graduate or Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center’s business planning class. She talks about why she started her own business and she shares some of her lessons learned in running a sustainable artisan jewelry enterprise.

Melissa says that it was with my help that she learned about the importance of setting well-defined goals:

“I was lucky enough to have an amazing teacher, Paul Terry, at the Renaissance Center in San Francisco, who taught me the importance of vision. He taught me to envision my success and what it would encompass. I used these goals as benchmarks when building my brand. Every time I reached one, I would sit down and create another. As the ‘visions’ kept coming true, they emboldened me to think bigger and more creatively each time.” (Thanks Melissa!)

Here is some of Melissa’s great advice for others considering a small business of their own:

Make sure it’s what you want to do. If you really love doing something consider how it will change when it becomes a business. I meet a lot of people who loved a hobby but when they had to economize it on a daily basis, found that they lost all joy in it.

Know that your life will change: your friendships, relationships, how you view the world…everything. When you take charge of your life by forging your own path, a lot of lessons will come forward that you didn’t consider. In some ways, it’s like a veil lifts in how you see the world. Remaining true to yourself and your passion will carry you through any unexpected reaction or loss that success may bring to you.

Always, always, always listen to your heart. If you are true to yourself you will always succeed.

You can read Melissa’s full profile here.

Strength In Numbers

September 17, 2013
Current Climate for Small Business, Money, Trends in Small Business
PTA
1 Comment

Raising money for an emerging or expanding small business is usually a necessity and “bootstrapping” (pulling yourself up from your personal resources only) is often not possible after the initial launch stage. Finding money has typically meant visiting banks, knocking on every friendly door you can think of, and asking your family for help.

In a recent post I mentioned some local funding resources and a couple of online tools for raising capital. These days, using internet tools to solicit funds from the community or find potential investors is a popular (and often quite successful) alternative to the traditional means of raising small business capital. New business owners can now secure start-up or expansion capital with a little bit of support from a lot of people. “Crowdfunding” is really a strength in numbers strategy.

There are many online crowdfunding platforms to choose from and sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are just the tip of the iceberg. Each one is different and some may only be a good fit if you meet certain criteria.

Many of these platforms can’t be used to solicit loans or offer financial returns or equity to supporters. They are essentially tools to get “grants” from friends, family and your wider community. You can offer small thank you gifts or perks in exchange for their financial support (such as a t-shirt branded with your company logo or an invite to a “members-only” event related to your business). These little offerings can inspire people to give, even in small amounts.

With the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act), which President Obama signed into law last year, there may soon be changes to the crowd-funding landscape. The Securities and Exchange Commission is in the process of finalizing and implementing rules on a provision of the Act that could make it possible for people to use crowd-funding platforms to raise investment capital from “Main Street” investors.

In the meantime, there are a number of online sites that can be used to target accredited investors or to secure a loan. Fundable is geared toward small business start-ups who can choose to offer rewards to their backers or equity to accredited investors in exchange for funding. CircleUp is an equity-based crowd-funding platform that focuses on angel investments in consumer product and retail companies. EquityNet, which calls itself “the original crowd-funding platform,” is specifically designed for entrepreneurs seeking equity capital or who are looking for loans, grants and access to a network of business supporters. Prosper and more recently, Kiva Zip, make it possible for entrepreneurs and small business owners to secure peer-to-peer loans.

Pay-in-advance is another strategy for raising a little capital from a lot of people. Similar to the CSA concept where eaters pay a farmer in the spring for a season of vegetables, Slow Money has created a service called Credibles, specifically designed for small, sustainable food-related businesses, which enables supporters to pre-pay for goods and services.

With all of the crowdfunding sites out there (according to industry estimates there are currently over 500 active crowdfunding platforms!), how do you figure out the right option for you? To start, Inc Magazine has a great flow chart to help you find the best fit among 22 crowdfunding platforms and this Forbes.com blog post gives a quick break-down on the pros and cons of the top six crowdfunding sites.

A crowd-funding campaign is not only about getting the money you need for a small business start-up or expansion, it’s about the opportunity to grow your customer or client base. Through the crowd-funding process you are developing a community of ambassadors for your business—people who like your business or business idea, who support your campaign, and who will spread the word to their friends. The crowd-funding approach can strengthen your business in more ways than just your bottom line.

photo credit: Arkansas Community Foundation (http://www.arcf.org)

Take a Break, Gain Perspective

Owning a small business requires all-consuming focus and it can be really hard to take a break. Yet it’s important for your health and the health of your business to un-plug and get away sometimes.

Lake Louise and the Canadian Rockies

Recently I traveled to the Rocky Mountains of Alberta Canada for a two-week vacation in Banff and Jasper National Parks. I was last there as a kid road tripping with my family from Vancouver, British Columbia. Traveling to Canada brought back old memories but also a fresh perspective. Climbing steep paths and breathing the mountain air was invigorating. I felt refreshed by the physical exertion and the natural beauty around me, and in these new surroundings I was able to see myself and my business in a new light. Away from the constant demands of day-to-day tasks, I was able to free-associate and dream about broader goals.

Getting away from the daily routine is key to being able to think creatively as a business owner. When we give ourselves time to relax, sleep in, exercise and do something fun that has nothing to do with our business, it can actually make us more productive and can even lead to new ideas. According to Tony Schwartz’s article in the New York Times earlier this year, “a new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal—including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations—boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health.”

John Donahoe, CEO of EBay, spends two weeks every year at a beach house on Cape Cod with bad cell phone service and no internet connection. “Without a constant barrage of work issues to respond to, I find that my mind calms down and my intuition begins to come alive. I am able to see things through a more creative lens and new ideas often emerge from my ‘time off’”.

You don’t have to travel a far distance to take a break. You can set aside 10 minutes a day for quiet reflection or a walk around the block. Even that short time away from work can be beneficial, especially if you do it regularly.

As small business owners our work is never done. The demands of the business and our own drive to create the best product or offer the best service can lead to workaholic behavior, which can often make us less productive. With the computer always on and the cell phone always in our pocket, it’s hard not to read every new email or respond to every call or text. We become reactive instead of proactive and can drift away from what is most important.

We often worry that things will fall apart if we’re not there or not constantly connected. But if we have developed good systems with well-trained employees we can trust, it may be easier to get away than we realize. The business can survive for a night or a few days without constant contact or input. And, more importantly, it may thrive because of that break and that time for reflection.

Planning for Business Success

Many people start small businesses and many seem to fail. Risks always exist in business.

You can reduce those risks if you set aside time to plan in advance. This means defining your business offerings, doing specific market research, recognizing the essential management skills you need, and projecting realistic financial expectations… in short, you can reduce risks when you write and use a business plan.

Small business owners often say they don’t have time to write a business plan. There is too much to do and they want to get on with running the business. (Or, they may be intimidated by the planning process or simply be procrastinating.)

It’s true that some small businesses start without planning and do very well. However, once a business is launched and things get complicated, it can be confusing to figure out next steps. A good business plan helps sort out your options and can help you focus.

Business experts disagree about the importance of writing a business plan. Though some research has found that writing a plan greatly increases the chances that a person actually goes into business, there are business school professors out there, like Steve Blank, who say that real entrepreneurs don’t write business plans.

Although it may not sound like it, I actually agree with Blank’s approach. In his Lean LaunchPad classes, he’s pushing students to constantly talk to people and test their theories as they plan. A hands-on, real world approach is central to how I teach entrepreneurship, too. You cannot write a business plan in a vacuum and expect it to serve you well. You must get out there, connect with people, and constantly test your assumptions.

Writing, implementing and maintaining a business plan is hard work. Planning means learning to take the pulse of your business — over and over again. You have to be open to new ideas and be willing to learn from your mistakes. There is a reward for all that hard work, though. You end up with an operational management tool, a marketing plan, financial projections, and a means of communicating your business to others.

The primary purpose for writing a plan, though, is for the process itself. It forces you to be objective and critical, identifying weaknesses, challenges and opportunities and setting benchmarks to track progress. Doing research, talking to people, and analyzing your operation will give you confidence to continue with the business.

It’s really important that the plan reflects your unique owner perspective. The plan is a foundation from which each owner’s business judgment, personal feelings and intuition are measured. You should write it in such a way that you can use it, in a format that is easy to update. To be truly useful, a business plan should be a dynamic document — current, accessible and appropriate for the business. Don’t spend a lot of time making a pretty document unless a formal plan is needed to present to a bank or other investor. It doesn’t have to be perfect looking; the key is that it is useful for you and your business.

A business plan doesn’t guarantee success but it can help prevent serious mistakes. It is a great way to stay attentive to the important details of your business, to industry trends and competitors, and to new directions and business growth. A good business plan will help you maintain profitability, acknowledge and minimize potential risks, and develop confidence for future opportunities.

So how do you find the time to write a business plan? As Tim Berry says, “You don’t. You are always planning. Your plan is never done but your planning process is your key to good management.”

So, write that plan (or revisit your old one). It will be well worth your effort!

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It’s not too late to shop local

Need motivation? Set a deadline!

A Birthday Reflection

In the Neighborhood

Wisdom from Melissa Joy Manning

Strength In Numbers

Take a Break, Gain Perspective

Planning for Business Success

185 Arkansas Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

415-255-0131

pta@staging.paulterry.com

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