Entrepreneurship in the Making

Here to announce the new title for my blog. Entrepreneurship in the Making.

Two reasons that I made the change. First is because I love reading about Entrepreneurship and studying subjects related to it. The next book on entrepreneurship I plan to read is the new biography on Steve Jobs.

Second reason is because in this blog I will no longer write specifically about business development (the previous title for this blog). I'm in the process of creating a website for my company with an integrated blog where I will write specifically about business development as it relates to distribution and manufacturing. I will probably do some cross posting.

That is all for today! Enjoy your day....

Social Entrepreneurship

I'm an advocate for Entrepreneurship. I love innovation and executing on creative ideas. Everything starts with an idea!

I follow a few blogs and one of them is Porverty Cure. Recently I read this inspiring blog post on what they call Social Entrepreneurship.

Here is the link and a quote from the blog
http://www.povertycure.org/media/blog/somo-beads-empowering-women-and-their-families-in-gulu/

Humans are incredible beings, capable of hard work and creativity. We find value and worth in working hard. When we don't earn what we have, we can become dependent and spoiled, and even worse, we lose sight of our self-worth. But, when given the opportunity to create, to work, to become independent, to sustain, we are empowered. Our physical, emotional and spiritual life is enriched. So I have learned, as it relates to poverty and development, that the fundamental principles of work need to be restored and reenacted - this will bring hope to the people of Africa ... and with hope comes unlimited potential. Eek! It's exciting to think about! ~ Heidi Schroeder, founder of SOMO Beads

It is exciting indeed the potential of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is about creating jobs.

Social Media - I'm going with the trend

I have been skeptical up until now about social media and perhaps also some laziness that has keep me from fully engaging in social media. Recently this book Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms by Michelle Golden came highly recommended to me. I'm not done reading it and it is already changing my mind. I still have to select which tools I will use but blogging will become more frequent here.

The book is not as much of "how to do it" but more about why it is important for businesses to be active in Social media.

Here are few reviews on the book 

Enjoy!

Steve Job's and Bill Gates share the platform

Found this video from here where Steve Job's and Bill Gates share the platform in 2007. Excellent big picture  overview of the technology
 

Entrepreneurs see an additional color

Came across this excellent video on entrepreneurship


Here are a few additional quotes from this website
http://www.povertycure.org/voices/andreas-widmer/

“Research has shown that in prosperous countries, 95% of all companies are small and medium-sized companies. They employ seventy-five percent of the entire workforce in places like Europe or, or America. They contribute— over fifty percent of all the GDP comes from SMEs, not from multinational large corporations. If you look at that same distribution in emerging markets, in poor countries, you see that there are a lot of very small companies and a few very large companies and nobody in the middle.” “Yet we know that that middle is what carries the economy, that is how you grow an economy and create a middle class. That is called the Missing Middle. And one of the things we really need to start focusing on is how do you grow that Missing Middle in emerging markets; how do you get these small and medium-sized companies to grow.”

Self-Esteem and Competition

I've been far too busy to blog and read and I'm not keeping up as I wanted to for this year.

But here goes a blog post.

I've been slowly reading Ron Baker's latest book called Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms

Here is a quote from the book which I believe to be true in any business, not just professional firm like mine.

People with high self-esteem are not threatened by the success of others. On the contrary, they are truly happy for another's success and will go out of their way to learn from them. The person who is not afraid of competition does not have any.

That is all for now. Enjoy you day!

Going after market share mistakes

One of the mistake businesses make is going after market share. This is most evident in the automotive industry in my opinion.

We can see this in the big three GM, Chrysler and Ford. The fact that they went bankrupt in 2008 to 2009 (GM and Chrysler) was the result of going after market share, although they would blame it on the market crash. The fact that they are so heavily unionized also played a role.

What inspired me to write about this are two things. First, is that I will never seek to go after market share in my business. Second, is that I have been a long time loyal driver of Volkswagen cars. The reality is that Volkswagen or local Volkswagen dealers have never recognized this.

Volkswagen does not seem to have learn any lessons from GM and Chrysler. Volkswagen unveil the newly design Jetta at a price point never seen before. Why? Because they are after market share. Now that the Jetta has been in the market for almost 6 months they are already talking about the positive results measured in sales volume. This of course means cuts in quality needed to be made as described here and the Jetta was remove from the premium compact car market. They will sell more cars and gain market share but the question of loyal customers has not yet been addressed.

I have set out to do this different in my business. I'm far more interested in loyal customers instead of going after market share. One way to ensure this is by having a customer price guarantee.

The work of the team at Interaction Versa is guaranteed to the complete satisfaction of our customers. If a customer is not completely delighted with the service performed by representatives of Interaction Versa, we will, at the option of our customer, either refund the price, or accept a portion said price that reflects the individuals of our customer's level of satisfaction.

We will assume the individuals and companies we work with are delighted upon payment received by us under the terms of our work.