The Women Entrepreneurs Blog @ Simon

Are you ready to Lead? Part II

Last Wednesday, we shared some of Jess’ views on the qualities and characteristics of effective leaders...please visit last Wednesday’s post and return as we continue to share Jess’ views…..

Leaders facilitate idea generation

Leaders who are attentive, approachable, and compassionate make subordinates feel appreciated and at ease sharing ideas and soliciting feedback. Without such support, creativity, innovation, and productivity suffer. When I worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, the global consulting firm, I learned to emulate my manager who visited team members at client sites to demonstrate concern for their well-being while away from company headquarters. Have you ever felt that your contributions to a project were underappreciated and, as a consequence, felt like not contributing as much in the future?  As a leader, you will have an opportunity to be inclusive and considerate, helping to ensure that no one else is made to feel that way.

Are you ready to Lead?

If you want to remain CEO of your company, leadership skills will be very important. As company head, you must be able to energize employees to produce excellence. But what makes an effective leader? Below, I invite you to read the thoughts of one of my colleagues - Jess Sadick - as he shares his views on the qualities and characteristics of effective leaders.

"Leadership is an important part of our education at Simon. At Orientation, we are invited to attend the Jensen Leadership Seminar and during the academic year the Kalmbach and Farash Lecture Series introduce us to accomplished executives with inspirational personal stories. 

In the classroom, Senior Lecturer in business communication, Dan Struble and the Center for Leadership Development teach us that effective communication is an essential component of leadership, and we complete three quarters of assignments intended to hone our public speaking, writing, and presentation skills.  We are fortunate to have more than a dozen active clubs in which to seek leadership roles.  With all of these experiences, we should be able to define the key qualities of effective leadership.

Make sure you don’t lose the lesson

I run the school magazine – the World According to Simon (WATS) – and let me tell you, “it ain’t no walk in the park.” Don’t get me wrong, I love the magazine to death but producing it definitely isn’t an easy task, especially since we increased frequency from quarterly to monthly. That being said, I wouldn’t change a thing about the experience because it has been so educational from an entrepreneurial perspective. These are some of the lessons I’ve learnt during my time running the magazine:

Choose your team very wisely. These are the people who will support you. They should be excellent at what they do, very committed and complementary to each other. If they aren’t, you will find yourself overburdened with work and putting in longer hours than you expected.  Choosing a great team requires evaluating people on what they bring to the table and forgetting relationships like friends, family, significant other etc. In re-organizing and expanding the WATS team I had to pass over friends who could do a reasonable job for persons who could do an excellent job.

Make sure you have excellent time management skills. There just aren’t enough hours in the day so you better know how to effectively manage the ones you have. I am currently doing three courses, working on this blog, working at the school writing center, managing a magazine, producing a newsletter, helping to run the entrepreneurship club and still working on my business plan. Beyond these duties there are still breakfast, lunch and dinner events to attend as well as guest lectures. Of course you can’t work all the time so I still need to hang out with my friends. My appointment book and Outlook calendar have become my greatest allies. They help me to effectively manage my time so I don’t break commitments left, right and center.

Have a “can do” attitude. Something unexpected will always pop up - someone can’t complete an article on time; someone can’t find the photograph you wanted; someone can’t interview the person you wanted or someone can’t lay out the magazine. As an entrepreneur you’ll have to put out lots of fires so you better think you can handle them. If you don’t, you’ll spend too much time worrying and complaining instead of looking for ways to rectify the situation.

Web tip of the Week – "Don’t be afraid to talk about your idea"

In my entrepreneurship class, we often have to get up in front of the entire class and talk about our ideas. You may think it’s absolutely crazy to tell an entire classroom full of people your idea, but it’s really not. These exercises have three great benefits:

• They force you to express your idea very succinctly and communicate it in a way that people can   easily understand. If they aren’t getting it, then maybe it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense or maybe you aren’t quite clear on what you want to do.
• You get to listen to if your idea sounds like the craziest thing in the world. It’s quite easy for things to sound normal in your head but completely insane when they escape your lips.
• You open yourself to getting some great feedback. Telling your ideas to others can help garner some new perspectives that can help you develop your idea even further.

So, next time you’re thinking of holding your idea close to your chest just consider all the great benefits that can be derived from sharing. And for those of you worrying about people stealing your idea remember one thing – ideas are simple, it’s the execution that’s the tough part.

Web tip of the week - Get a mentor

Last academic year, I decided I was going to develop my magazine publishing idea into a full-blown business plan for the Mark Ain Business Model Competition. I knew the editorial side of publishing but certainly was no expert on the managerial side. Luckily I was able to meet David Mammano, who became an invaluable mentor.

David owns Next Step, a magazine that helps kids transition from high school to college. The magazine has circulation rates of over a million and readership throughout the entire USA. David was able to help guide me through my plan and open my eyes to opportunities and difficulties I had never even thought of. He was quite instrumental in helping me gain a solid understanding of the magazine publishing industry.

I therefore encourage you to get yourself a mentor when starting your business. This person can offer insight on your industry as well as broaden your perspective with regard to your idea. You need someone to support you but keep you grounded and a mentor is definitely great for this.

You Need a Plan

Here at the Simon Graduate School of Business, one of the courses I teach is Entrepreneurship 423, otherwise known as "the business plan" course. At the Simon School our research has revealed that ten years after graduation, approximately one half of our graduates migrate into their own business or some form of entrepreneurial venture.

While not a required course, it is usually a sell-out as entrepreneurially inclined students recognize the importance of knowing how to prepare a business plan. The value of a solid, well conceived business plan cannot be overstated.

All businesses require capital to begin the venture. Whether you are funding the venture privately or soliciting funding elsewhere, the business plan provides the reader with the required information that is critical to understanding many aspects of the business.

The authorship of the plan forces the creator of the business to examine many of its elements by thinking through the process and articulating it on paper. It is designed to detail all of the major elements of the product or service as well as the financial implications, needs, start-up capital, return on investment and income projections. No one, other than a delirious relative is going to advance you any significant amount of money for your venture without having a thorough review of a business plan.

Simply put, a business plan is expected when asking for funds to invest in a new business start up.  A well conceived plan answers most of the questions an investor will have. If there are no outside investors, there is great value in writing the plan for yourself, simply to chart the course for your venture.   

Generating Ideas

So you’re interested in starting your own business; you’ve got the passion; you’ve come to our website because you think it’s full of amazing resources and you are ready to take the entrepreneurial world by storm. But…something’s missing. You haven’t got a big idea! 

A great idea would certainly be helpful in creating that storm. However, you don’t know where or how to begin generating ideas. Well, allow me to introduce you to some techniques. I know from experience that these really work because over the weekend I sat in Starbucks generating ideas over a delicious cup of peppermint hot chocolate.

I must tell you that as I sat in my entrepreneurship class listening to the professor tell us about ways of generating ideas I thought, "This guy sure is entertaining but does this stuff really work?" I guess so because I got about 15 ideas over my two trips to Starbucks. And no, one of the techniques isn’t going to Starbucks and drinking peppermint hot chocolate.

Below is the list of techniques that worked for me.

Kicking into entrepreneurial high gear!

It’s the start of a new academic year here at Simon. We have a new crop of first year students and I’m  about to officially rise to the rank of second year student. Needless to say, I am completely excited! I am about to take my first entrepreneurship course, increase the frequency of our school magazine from quarterly to monthly and fully assume my duties as VP of Events for the Entrepreneurship Club.

Yes readers there are certainly exciting times ahead. And not only for me, for you as well, because as I deepen my knowledge in the area of entrepreneurship, corporate finance and product planning and development (these are my other two electives) I plan to share all of what I learn with you. Consider it my sneak peek into the educational experience at Simon. And if it’s anything like my first year I can guarantee that it will be a phenomenal experience.

The Simon program is great. Traditionally the school is known for finance and not entrepreneurship. However, I think being an entrepreneur means embracing a variety of core managerial skills and that’s what you get at Simon.

Going for the Glory – making it past those crossroads

I’m in Barbados right now enjoying the beautiful weather and the even more beautiful beaches. Everyone needs a vacation some time right? (Although I’m not completely on vacation since I’m still blogging. Don’t worry, I love this so much it feels like a hobby).

I got inspired to write this post from fellow blogger Yvonne after reading ‘The Entrepreneurial Game – Isn’t a Game, At All’. There is one section in the post where Yvonne talks about standing at the crossroads of your life. Take a read, it’s a great post.

I was at that very same crossroads when I started business school. I had three main paths before me – pursue my dreams of owning my own business, head off to the corporate world or pursue my dreams of owning my own business while simultaneously courting the corporate world just in case my dreams failed.

Initially I chose path 3, pursuing my dreams but still courting the corporate world. After all if situations didn’t quite shape up as I intended I needed to know there was some security there. However, in pursuing such a strategy one tends not to approach each objective with the total degree of energy and commitment required. When you have other options you tend not to worry about seeking alternative solutions to mishaps with any one option. You just switch to something else.

Angel Investing Cheat Sheet

Given that I’m working as an intern at an angel investing organization I feel it’s only appropriate to talk about angel investing at some point before my internship ends. The Rochester Angel Network was founded in 2005 to help add some strength to Rochester’s entrepreneurial development framework. An affiliate of Greater Rochester Enterprise, a regional economic development organization for the nine-county Greater Rochester area, the organization facilitates investment into seed and early-stage start-up companies.

One of my fears in heading to RAN was that I had taken no accounting and finance electives and I knew nothing about the high-tech industry I imagined was the focus of many of the business plans heading the organization’s way. Enter Simon first year education. I was well-equipped to analyze these plans because analyzing a business was not only about the figures but viewing the organization as a whole.

My first screening committee meeting at RAN was a great lesson in teaching me this. The investors focused on a few key areas when looking at plans – the financials (a no-brainer), the pre-money valuation of the company, the management team, the competitive advantage and the marketing and sales strategy. Whenever you approach angels you better be strong on all fronts.

Essentially what are they really looking for? They want to know you have a good idea with some serious commercial value; they want to know you have the right team in place to run this company successfully; they want to know you have an effective plan to get your product out there in the market and they want to know that you have the potential to give them some great returns for the risk they would be undertaking, with your venture.

The pre-money valuation i.e. the value of your company before they inject their financing? Well, they need to know the value of their stake in your company. A few percentage points could mean a lot if a successful company is sold or goes public.

For those of you who may be going like – “What is an angel investor?” ..........