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USA Market Segmentation
2008-05-31 15:55:00
I know for sure that Small Business Owners don’t think a lot about market segmentation and how they should target the right customer with their services and offers. But, I would say that you need to Discover Your Target Market and find out more about the market segmentation is mandatory, in at least 2 moments in a business life: start-up time, when checking to see if your business idea is viable or looking for financing when things start to move on the right path and you need to see how you could do more. Assuming that my readers are from U.S., I was looking for some time to find a good resource to explain the consumer behaviour and market segmentation in US. I was quite glad to find Linda Morton’s Market Segmentation Report that describes in detail various market segments in US and their behavior. The report takes into consideration the following segmentations: Generation Segments (The WWII Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Generation y) Life Stages Segments...

What kind of employees for your small business?
2008-05-29 21:47:00
I have something that really bothers me lately. What kind of employees do you really want in your small business? Usually if we are talking about a bigger business, it’s better to have more types, even if you consider them individually they are not the very optimum. I mean yeah, you want the best sales people, but you might just want one that can’t sell well in general, but has the luck or ability to sign just one huge contract a year. Or yes, you want the best programmers in the World, but you might want lighter ones to deal with your site. Anyway, there are several types of employees you might want to have. I’m listing below the ones that comes first to my mind: the rookie. Good for tasks that are very repetitive or just plain operational the YUPPIE. Usually the best if you have an interesting business with great growth potential. They just want to grow together with you. They leave you the moment they have a better opportunity the seasoned professional. Good ex...
More About: Business , Small Business , Employees , Small

Reasons to start a business
2008-05-25 09:21:00
Writing the Small Business Entrepreneur blog involves a lot of reading. And since I do so much reading, I can tell you that I’m amazed to see how different the reasons to start a business are. Sure, we can have Necessity or opportunity entrepreneurship, but besides that, it depends on the way of thinking, time, money to burn and determination. Let’s take for example Rob McNealy from Start up Story Radio - he needed more time to spend with his wife and child. He says: “My company, Neraida Vision Systems didn’t take off like I hoped, but it was a huge learning experience. Because failure was not an option, necessity caused me to take a step in another direction. As a result, my next company, Natural Wood Floors, was born about a year later.” So what’s your reason?
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What’s the best age to be an entrepreneur?
2008-05-13 22:28:00
I don’t think you remember, but a while ago I wrote an article about Entrepreneur ship age - when is better to start a business. Well, I’ve turned 30 since I wrote that article, and getting older made me smart enough to write a guest post on Ben Means Business about What Is the Best Age to Start a Business? I actually didn’t re-read my original post, if you read them both, can you tell me if there are any differences? So, how old are you?
More About: An Entrepreneur

Interview with Web 2.0 entrepreneur Wei Yang
2008-05-09 22:12:00
Wei Yang accepted to make an interview about EasyAutoSales, Georgia’s fastest growing web 2.0 automotive startup that he thinks it will change the way cars are offered on the web. He Co-founded EasyAutoSales.com, together with some local entrepreneurs and started with no outside investments. The site launched its beta in March and garnered a million cars within just one month. Here is the interview.
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Some more thoughts on Romanian Workforce
2008-04-29 21:47:00
If I remember well, this is not the first time I write about the workforce in Romania. In fact, yes, here is my previous post about Worforce in Romania. The reason I’m writing again now is a Manpower survey that really shows how the situation is over here. On one hand we have several big companies moving here for the cheaper workforce (probably the most known is Renault making the Logan here) and more recently Nokia moving from Germany. As I said in my previous post, you can still get unskilled cheap labour force here. On the other hand I have my own experiences trying to hire, and the Manpower results that says: “Romania faces biggest labour shortage in the world“. “Engineers’ salaries reached as much as over 1,000 euros a month over the last few years, and in certain fields, such as IT&C they may go up to as much as 2,500 euros. In terms of top management, a CEO of a multinational makes at least 10,000 euros per month.”. So what can I say? L...
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Commenting on Ben’s 10 Commandments of Surefire Home Business Success
2008-04-20 10:18:00
Ben has some interesting points about running a business from home in his “10 Commandments of Surefire Home Business Success !“. I found them (and actually his entire blog) as an interesting resource for running a home business, so now I need to comment on his points: Be Professional. People usually find it difficult to maintain the same level of professionalism at home as they do at a 9-5. But believe me, professionalism is key to your success as a home business owner. Correct! The thing that usually happens is that because you are small, you tend to do some things on a lower level, some sort of “well, it’s going to work this way as well” in which “this way” is not very good. Of course, in some cases, you simply can’t perform better, but if you let this add up, you will get a messy business. You will have not so good contracts, not so good offers, not so good customer care, not so good supplies and then, you’re not so good eith...
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Ben Means Business comments on my Delegate in a small business article
2008-04-20 09:28:00
I’ve got a comment on my Delegate in a small business from Ben saying: “I am skeptical about delegating to family. From my experiences that usually doesn’t turn out well. I expressed my thoughts on hiring family in a post a while back. I was called Ten Commandments to Surefire Home Business Success. Check out the 9th Commandment and let me know what you think.” Here is Ben’s 9th Commandment: “Oftentimes friends and family, who are all well-intentioned, will hinder your business from being successful. It is OK to allow your friends and family to benefit from your labor. However, “free stuff all around” every time they enter your premises is not a good way to get this done. Believe me, all those freebies add up pretty quickly. So keep an eye on the “benefits by association”. Friends and/or family are usually your first employees also. This is another area where they can hurt your business more than they help it. You will find tha...
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Delegate in a small business (part 2)
2008-04-19 22:42:00
OK, I’m back. So I’ve started talking about delegation as a management process, now I will get down to delegate in a small business. First of all if you want to delegate the right way based on the receiver abilities, it’s quite hard to have a person with the right set of skills for each task you want to delegate. So basically you will end up doing time related delegation (check part 1 of the Delegate in a small business article to see how I have defined these delegation types). And if you are doing time related delegation, it means that the receiver doesn’t have exactly the best skills to do the job. Which means the results can be or not the same quality as done by you, or it might not take the same time, resulting in deadline problems. Add to this that even if you delegate, the final responsibility will be yours, and you will see why most people fear delegating core business processes. Now, things are even worse in a small business. First of all, you donR...
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Delegate in a small business (part 1)
2008-04-18 21:32:00
Learning how to delegate tasks it’s not really something specific in a small business. If you are a boss somewhere and have some colleagues to help you over, it means that you have to know how to delegate. However, in a way, delegating is more complicated in a small business. Let’s start by thinking about the types of delegation that there are. And I think there are at least 3 types : Time related delegation Despotic delegation Delegation based on abilities I think the most common type of delegation is the time related delegation. You simply have way too many things to do and you need some help to get some tasks done elsewhere. While is the most common, it’s probably not very efficient, because you don’t necessarily delegate because somebody else can do something better than you do, but because it has more time than you. Also, you tend to delegate only the most time consuming or maybe boring tasks and even if this is going to make you happy, it probably won...
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Entrepreneurship stereotypes
2008-04-17 22:36:00
Or “Why all the mummies in the movies have problems walking?” I write an entrepreneurship blog for more than 3 years now. Writing the Small Business Entrepreneur blog also involves a lot of reading - I call it becoming more educate. Anyway the bottom line is that there are a lot of stereotypes when talking about entrepreneurship. And so do the mummies movies. I think in 99.99% of the movies I saw, all the mummies have a bad leg or some sort of walking disorder. I don’t know where this stereotype started from as I don’t know where all the stereotypes about entrepreneurship started. Take this one for example: most businesses will fail in the first years (first 5 as I know). Ok, so maybe yes, most of the businesses are closing down in 5 years, but does this mean they have failed? If you ask me, no. If I’m starting a company, it doesn’t mean I need to get it through the centuries. It should work as long as it serves the purposes for which it has been ...
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Senior entrepreneurship
2008-04-16 22:28:00
If you read my How does it feels to be 20 years late on entrepreneurship? article earlier, now I’m taking things to the max by saying something about senior entrepreneurship. Here in Eastern Europe, I believe that 99.99% of the people don’t even imagine that they could start a business at the retirement age, mostly because people here are missing balance in their work life and don’t have any mental resources to start over again later in life. But things are a little different elsewhere. I’m not sure if it’s related to the recession, or the need to have supplemental income at the retirement age or just having enough time to take the entrepreneurship path, but you can find plenty of articles about aged entrepreneurs. Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog is quite good in showcasing senior entrepreneurship stories. Like for example the story of Wayne Hauschild, the owner GameDaySigns : “I represent a small but growing segment of America...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Senior

Comments on Fred Wilson’s Ten Questions About Entrepreneurs
2008-04-15 20:54:00
I’ve got the chance to see opinions about subjects I’m familiar with in Fred Wilson ’s Ten Questions About Entrepreneurs - as usual I need to comment as I’m not entirely comfortable with all of the items. And by the way, all the links in this article are links to bits and pieces I wrote over the time, hopefully valuable resources now to argument my comments. If you wonder who is Fred Wilson, here is his Wikipedia page. I’m copy pasting the essential items so I have a framework for my comments (sorry Fred for the copy paste) What is entrepreneurship? It’s the art of turning an idea into a business. Correct. Most people never get from the idea to the actual implementation. That’s why not everybody is an entrepreneur, and why if you manage to make a business from just an idea, you become one. Can entrepreneurship be taught/learned? I don’t think so. It’s like a personality disorder. You are born with it. Don’t agree. As I o...
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Who’s killing the Small Business Entrepreneur blog?
2008-04-11 19:35:00
I’m not sure what’s going on, but really, the Small Business Entrepreneur blog is going down in Google. I believe it doesn’t have enough incoming links or something. Any ideas?
More About: Small Business , Blog

Growing your customers as you grow your business
2008-04-11 19:31:00
I think most business die in one of these 2 circumstances: getting too much business (or more than the business growth can absorb) getting too little business for the current business level (or not covering the costs) getting unappropriated business While case 2 is probably the most known factor in building an entrepreneurship fear, the first one is also getting it’s shares of casualties. Usually it goes like this: most business start with the goal to fulfill the needs in a niche market, and since the business plan time, the expectations are to handle a number of customers. If things start well, you can expect that the initial number of customers will grow. But besides the growth in customer numbers, sometimes there is some other kind of growth that can affect your sales. And that is the growth of each customer’s  business. Some of your customers will probably grow at an accelerated speed - that’s usually good- unless they grow much more faster than you. Because...
More About: Business , Customers , Growing , Grow

Entrepreneurship changes reality
2008-03-30 21:44:00
I’ve been travelling lately to countries that are supposed to be the engine and driving forces of the Worldwide economy - USA and Germany. And although most of the entrepreneurship stories, knowledge and money come from well developed countries, I would say that entrepreneurship is really dimmed over there. While in US, I couldn’t see any big industrial developments (of course, I didn’t travel so much there after-all). And while in Germany, no new houses, no road constructions no nothing. That supports my older theory that is actually harder to be entrepreneurial in Germany than in Romania, simply because they already have most of the things in demand. But if you want to see real entrepreneurship development, come for example in Romania (which is by the way one of the lowest entrepreneurial countries and you will see amazing developments) Like for example, over the past 5 years, I have around 6 new houses and a block of flats on my street alone - usually done by c...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Reality

Doing business
2008-03-30 21:22:00
I was getting myself ready to write about Entrepreneurship in Brazil and dedicate it to Cris Zimermann from Virtual entrepreneur when I found this article: Brazilians are among most entrepreneurial . It says that “The total entrepreneurial activity index (TEA) in the country grew from the 11.6% registered in 2006 to 12.72% in 2007, the equivalent to 15 million enterprises” Anyway, the thing is that if you are looking at this screenshot (I’ve copied it from there, thanks) you will see that none of the so called “developed countries is there”. I don’t know yet why, but the good news is that the article is based on the findings of the 2007 GEM research (look for the PDF file to download) written by Niels Bosma, Kent Jones, Erkko Autio and Jonathan Levie. Now I need to read this, and I’m sure it will be interesting to find out what’s special in the countries in the top (I know that Romania usually ranks amongst the bottom of the list, sho...
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Self publishing a book can be easy
2008-03-29 09:54:00
As the Small Business Entrepreneur blog is already 3 years old, I sometimes flirt with the idea that putting everything in a regular book would be the next stage in providing essential information to entrepreneurs wannabe and a great support for anyone looking to run a small business. I always thought that publishing a book is a daunting task that requires a big investment, going back and forth at the editors and printing house , getting yourself an ISBN and all that there is, including finding ways to distribute it. Well, I got news for you. There are Self Publishing services out there which make things very easy! Let’s have a look at authorHouse and see how easy thing really are. authorHouse publishes your books on demand (meaning you don’t have stocks to pay up-front, both paperback and hardcover books are printed as orders are received, rather than doing large print runs that sit in warehouses, waiting for orders.) Therefore you have 2 costs: the initial cost the p...
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More on Philippines entrepreneurship
2008-03-24 22:53:00
After writing a while ago about SME Insight Magazine from Philippine and later about 7 steps to start a business - advices from the Philippines - I’ve became interested in finding out more on entrepreneurship in “far away places” - well if you live in Europe, Philippines is exactly on the other side of the Earth. While I’m not prepared yet to write a full review about doing business in Philippines (maybe I’ll do that later), there are a couple of articles that got my attention in the last week or so. The first one, Starting them young on entrepreneurship by By Kenneth del Rosario (Philippine Daily Inquirer) is about the educational efforts that take place in Philippines to teach youngsters about entrepreneurship: “In this program, students are challenged to look into social problems that plague the country and develop solutions where they themselves can be part of.” I’m not sure if this is against one of my older articles - Born or tau...
More About: Entrepreneurship

2008 Small Business Survey Results
2008-03-23 20:39:00
An interesting article by Janet Attard on a survey conducted on 400 Business KnowHow.com website visitors, that can give you an insight over the small business and entrepreneurship in USA. “When asked to comment on their most pressing business concerns this year, business owners brought up a wide range of economic concerns. Among the more frequently cited concerns: fuel costs, healthcare costs, difficulty in getting credit, high taxes, foreign competition, and fear of recession causing businesses and consumers to put off spending. ” Anyway, you can read some interesting statistics in the 2008 Small Business Survey Results - I can’t comment on them, sorry.

Make your employees happy - it’s an entrepreneur task
2008-03-23 20:28:00
Being a small business it’s always hard to hire the right persons to do the job and even harder to keep them committed. Hiring in a small business is difficult from more than one reason: your payments can’t be so great - employees are a cost, and costs are important for a small business your package of benefits can’t beat the corporate packages. No free tickets to spa, no paid vacations, probably no company car no professional HR. This means less evaluations, less trainings, less team-buildings difficult to give a raise In fact I wrote an entire article about Hiring in a boostraped company, no need to repeat myself over and over again. So, let’s discuss something that is even more important than hiring: keeping your employees happy. First of all we will start with the assumption that you don’t have a HR department to do the job, and even if you do, keeping employees happy should be on your everyday to do list while you are the owner or shareholder of ...
More About: Entrepreneur , Employees , Happy , An Entrepreneur , Make

Hiring new employees versus profitability
2008-03-22 10:33:00
Here I’m talking about a boostraped company, starting small with the owners work, looking to expand. And the question is can you keep the productivity up by hiring new people? This is the part where you, the reader should identify yourself with the article: you started small, probably working from home, got some nice customers, income is going steady, but you feel you can’t expand and grow profits unless you get some help (this is one of these moments when you are working 12 hours a day, and over weekends to get stuff done but it’s still not enough). If you are in this situation, the only valid thought is that you need to hire somebody so you could have more customers and cash more in. And now the question again: if you hire a new person, your profit will go up or down? I mean if you have a profit of 3000 euro per working man (yourself) now, does this mean that if you are going to hire 2 more you will get 9000 euro profit at the end of the month? Well…no. In ...
More About: Employees , Hiring , Versus

Marketing shouldn’t be that expensive
2008-03-20 22:18:00
Most small business owners have a hard time spending on marketing - I can see why, it’s very easy to think that with a limited budget, you can’t do much when you see how the big spenders play -. I’m not going to play smart and say this is not true, because I’m guilty as charged of not investing enough in marketing, but still there are some things you could do without breaking the bank. I actually did have a debate with a colleague recently regarding wearing Embroidered shirts at a conference, and while she thought differently I really believe a shirt with your logo is an easy way of branding and marketing a small business. Look at this black shirt - classy and casual in the same time, what could be wrong in placing a small logo on it? First of all, it would be much easier for people to see what company are you from, and it should prove your attention to marketing a bit. It doesn’t necessarily say that I would do great business with you, but it’s ...
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What’s next on Small Business Entrepreneur blog?
2008-03-20 20:25:00
One of my colleagues said today that I hardly write on the blog lately - which actually might be true. And moreover, I’ve read a while ago that in order to have a successful blog, you have to build anticipation, so the readers can expect you are going to provide interesting stuff to them in an achievable time frame. So let me have a look on my PDA to see what ideas I’ve collected for the blog (a PDA is a wonderful thing if you want to surprise yourself from time to time with the amount of things you can actually forget). I’m copy pasting from the PDA - no idea what some of the items really mean because I don’t quite remember why I wrote them): Do you have entrepreneur blood? - completely lost here, what was I thinking? Make your employees happy - it’s an entrepreneur task Grow your business at the same pace with growing your customers Shareholders families - big influencers for a small business Up-selling to older customers (maybe I already wrote about...
More About: Business , Small Business , Entrepreneur , Blog , Small

Start your business now and in one year you could…
2008-03-20 07:57:00
well, work as a PR agency for your country’s Dakar racing team. Shake hands with the Transportation minister. Promote the image of racing drivers. And even better, it can be done without any outside investment. How does this sound to you? (I bet you have 2 options: not believing it’s possible or feeling the achievements above are really not so important). But in our case, its real and important for us. Because this is what my two partners Simona and Tina did (amongst many other things) since starting the inPRogress spin-off in January 2007. I’ve got pictures to prove: inPRogress with the Transportation Minister, Ludovic Orban Team Dakar Romania with the Minister What’s your dream? Start your business now and in one year you could…  
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5 things I’ve learned about me while being an entrepreneur
2008-03-17 21:46:00
If anything, I would describe my 3 years of entrepreneurship as a self educating experience that led to getting a good professional experience and an excellent thinking model.  Of course, we had a lot of business accomplishment and stuff, but if regarded at a larger scale, I would remember this period as a time of learning, trial and error and personal formation. I’ve learned these 5 important things about me (what are yours?): I’m probably one of the laziest persons on earth. If you are an entrepreneur this might actually help as it will make you make things efficiently I don’t like to take risks. Contrary with the opinion that entrepreneurs are risk takers, I’ve played easy and safe all along the way. I’m good in theory, I suck at implementations. That’s why you need to hire people - you might have brilliant ideas but that’s not necessarily sufficient if the result is lame. I’m good at customer care. Hopefully. I’m easy to di...
More About: Entrepreneur , An Entrepreneur , Things , Learned

Entrepreneurship and small businesses the small driving forces of the econo
2008-03-15 09:29:00
Writing an entrepreneurship blog really puts me in contact with a lot of interesting entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship and educational organizations, and sometimes I’m also pitched to write something for them. Either a guest post, or a review on an entrepreneurship events or something like that. From time to time, during these interactions the idea that small businesses and entrepreneurship are the engine of the economy. That it creates work places, value and money. Or maybe sometimes I see on TV that the government should help more business to start, so that the economy grows further. Well, in fact, I don’t really pay attention at this idea (of entrepreneurship as a factor in the economy) - I need to do some thinking to realise that the Turnover that we had last year means that we have created income per capita for the economy. Or the people we hired means we created workplaces. Because in most cases, entrepreneurs don’t think about themselves as being part of somet...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Driving , Small , Small Businesses , Forces

How does it feels to be 20 years late on entrepreneurship?
2008-03-02 11:13:00
Last year I’ve turned 30, which besides marking the point where I enter a new part of my life (like the boring, dull maturity) stopped me from an exclusive club - the entrepreneurs getting rich before 30. Even if I strike rich in a few years, it’s going to be too late to be extraordinary. I won’t get any special loans for your young entrepreneurs. Any mistake is likely to affect my family life even more now. I have commitments and responsibilities. So, from time to time I’m thinking - maybe if I would have started this earlier… But most people never start the entrepreneurship path because they are afraid of failure and usually they keep postponing the starting point waiting for… an idea, money to invest, or the Holy Spirit. If you are in this position (waiting for things to happen on their own) then you should read the following article. Jay Richard’s From the cube to entrepreneurship . Jay has a very well written story about him getting la...
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Entrepreneurship is a way of life
2008-03-01 08:59:00
I’m not necessarily talking about serial entrepreneurs or how is going to overtake your life. There is something more subtle about it. If you ever founded a company and tried to run it for a while, your way of thinking about regular life things will change dramatically. Just the other day, I was talking with one of my co-workers at my official 9 to 5 job and we got into the usual thing about money, getting a house, a car and forming a family. It’s probably a very common discussion amongst young employees (I’m not so young anymore), and I couldn’t help myself noticing that while my colleague had some strong needs, she couldn’t see the connection between the current situation and the one she tries to accomplish. I would say that between everything you want to accomplish and the current situation is always a connection. Because you need to set clear and achievable goals, evaluate the current situation, see what you need to perform in order to achieve the g...
More About: Life , Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is hard work
2008-02-27 22:29:00
Of course I’ve already said this on my blog in a way or another, but it seems is never enough. Probably the latest time I’ve said it was in “There is something wrong with entrepreneur’s minds” - “Having more free time is an absolute non-sense, at least in the beginning. If you start small and probably without any significant outside investment, then, here we go, you will have long working hours, working weekends, and no holidays!”. Well, right now, I’m able to make a little differentiation: we have a big difference between work long and work hard. And, unfortunately for the entrepreneurs they have to do some sort of work hard for long if you get what I’m saying. But why is this so hard? (I’m not complaining I’m just putting warning labels all over the place). Well, Socrates said: “The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know”. And if you are just starting up, well, you actually don’t know anythin...
More About: Entrepreneurship , Work , Hard