Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2020 i Entrepreneur's Startups

WANT MORE HOW-TO ADVICE? PICK UP OUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, START YOUR OWN BUSINESS, AT ENTREPRENEUR.COM/SYOB. If you’re in business, you’re a negotiator. You have no choice. Business doesn’t happen unless two or more people enter into a transaction. This can be as simple as buying inventory or as complicated as a merger of two public companies. Without transactions, business doesn’t happen, and every transaction involves a certain amount of negotiation. If I had to pick one of the scariest challenges facing every first-time entrepreneur, it would be learning how to negotiate. Nobody (except perhaps a lawyer) likes to negotiate—it’s confrontational, it involves a certain amount of “playacting,” and it may put you in the position of thinking you’re “putting something over” on another human being. In a big company, you…

❏ The number of goods to be sold❏ The condition of the goods at the time of delivery❏ Return privileges and/or credits for goods delivered in defective condition❏ Rebates for goods that aren’t sold within a specified time period❏ Shipping and delivery dates❏ Method of shipping (UPS versus FedEx, for example)❏ Method of payment (money order versus credit card, for example)❏ Currency of payment (for international sales)❏ Whether discounts will be offered for volume or bulk purchases❏ The timing of payment (cash up front versus installment payments)❏ The interest rate to be paid on any deferred portion of the purchase price❏ The penalty rate of interest to be paid if any portion of the purchase price isn’t paid on time❏ Whether the seller will have a lien on the goods…

Before you launch a marketing campaign, answer the following questions about your business and your product or service: ❏ Have you analyzed the total market for your product or service? Do you know which features of your product or service will appeal to different market segments?❏ In forming your marketing message, have you described how your product or service will benefit your clients?❏ Have you prepared a pricing schedule? What kinds of discounts do you offer, and to whom do you offer them?❏ Have you prepared a sales forecast?❏ Which media will you use in your marketing campaign?❏ Do your marketing materials mention any optional accessories or added services that consumers might want to purchase?❏ If you offer a product, have you prepared clear operating and assembly instructions if required?…

Dave Colina’s startup could have been severely hurt by the pandemic. His company makes the sports recovery drink O2, and prior to COVID-19, half of its business came from gyms. But once lockdowns began, gyms were closed and athletes were stuck at home. Colina worried for his future but decided to take a gamble: He found unique ways to financially support those closed gyms, even as he ran tight on cash. “We felt that as long as we did the right thing to help our gym owners, then chances were it would come back to us in the end,” he says. He was right. His direct-to-consumer sales are tracking to be 10 times higher than last year’s, and his entire business is on pace to grow five times. How? He…

Even as the franchise model has expanded into just about every industry imaginable, food remains the largest and one of the fastest-growing industries in the franchise world. Thirty percent of the 1,105 companies that applied for EntrepreneurÕs 2020 Franchise 500 ranking were food-related franchises, and new concepts continue to come on the scene every year. Food is also one of the most durable franchise industries. While running a restaurant can certainly be challenging, there’s a reason brands like A&W, which just turned 100 last year, are still around today—they know how to earn loyalty, and they know how to adapt to keep that loyalty strong even in extreme situations. As dining rooms were shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic, food franchisors rose to the occasion, quickly finding ways…

After the papers had been signed and the hands shaken, Skip Corn turned to his partner, Chris Skodras. “I don’t want to go cry in front of my wife,” Corn said in his distinct Southern drawl. “But I can cry in front of you.” And he did. So did Skodras. “We cried every day for six months,” says Corn, 68. “To hand your baby off to somebody— it’s a traumatic experience.” Over more than a decade, these two friends had built a 32-unit franchise called Eggs Up Grill, based in South Carolina. They wanted their restaurants to have small-town charm, so they ran the company with a small-town ethos. Everything was done with love and gut instinct. They answered the phones; they solved franchisees’ problems. They insisted that every franchisee…

Are you serious about wanting to be a better negotiator? Then learn to play poker. A good poker player is almost always a good negotiator. Consider the lessons poker teaches you: • Use a “poker face” to conceal your emotions.• It isn’t so much the hand you’re dealt as what the other players think you’ve got. If you get a great hand and show too much enthusiasm, the other players will fold early and leave you with a small pot, but if the other players think you have only a mediocre hand, they’ll stay in the game and leave a lot more money on the table.• Likewise, if you truly have a mediocre hand, by making the other players think you’ve got something better, they’ll yield to their insecurity and…

Angela Gennari didn’t expect to win. She’s honest about that. She’s the founder of Titan Global Enterprises, an Atlanta-based company that staffs and runs security for events, and it’s a small player in a giant industry. So when the University of Georgia’s athletics contract came up for 2019 (which included its huge football stadium), she saw it as a good learning opportunity. She thought she’d throw everything she had at the bid, lose, get some great insight, and be better prepared next time. But then the unexpected happened: She won. “What a sense of release that was,” she says. The feeling would soon turn to panic. She discovered that her three employees overseeing operations were slacking—not filing important documents, not properly training new employees, and so on. “It could have…

On March 7 at 4:30 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, a tech company’s worst nightmare began. For eight and a half hours, a catastrophic network failure disabled Basecamp’s popular project management software. Instead of boosting productivity for its three million accounts around the world, Basecamp stopped people from getting their work done. “We’re incredibly sorry…especially for our European customers,” wrote cofounder and CTO David Heinemeier Hansson on the company blog. He explained that the problem originated with their cloud provider, took full responsibility, and promised they would work diligently to make sure it never happened again. But it did—just six days later. This time, Heinemeier Hansson couldn’t apologize enough. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry (and ashamed),” he told customers. “It’s also been a mighty fall…From riches of reliance to rags of…

The right image packs a powerful marketing punch. To make it work for you, follow these steps: ❏ Create a positioning statement for your company. In one or two sentences, describe what distinguishes you from your competition.❏ Test your positioning statement. Does it appeal to your target audience? Refine it until it speaks directly to their wants and needs.❏ Use the positioning statement in every written communication to customers.❏ Integrate your company’s positioning message into all your marketing campaigns and materials.❏ Include your team in the positioning effort. Help employees understand how to communicate your positioning to customers.…

You can never get a bargain on something you really, really want. In any negotiation, the side that needs the deal more is the side that gives up the most—precisely because they need the deal and can’t afford to have the other side walk away. Winning the most points in a negotiation is almost always a function of: (1) not needing the deal as much as the other side does, (2) convincing the other side they need the deal more than you do, or (3) a combination of 1 and 2. Nervous about negotiating? Here’s a great way to practice. Go to collectibles shows and look for items you don’t feel strongly about—you can take them or leave them. When you find one, approach the dealer and offer him 50…

WANT MORE HOW-TO ADVICE? PICK UP OUR COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, START YOUR OWN BUSINESS, AT ENTREPRENEUR.COM/SYOB. You may know how to build the perfect product or provide excellent service, but do you know how to market your business? If not, no amount of operational expertise will keep your business afloat. Without marketing, no one will know your business exists—and if customers don’t know you’re there, you won’t make any sales. Advertising doesn’t have to mean multimillion-dollar TV commercials. There are plenty of ways to market your business that are affordable or even free. All it takes is a little marketing savvy and dedication. CREATING A MARKETING PLAN Everyone knows you need a business plan, yet many don’t realize a marketing plan is just as vital. Unlike a business plan, a marketing…

Here are four strategies that leaders can implement: 1 Make sure your product stands out. Let the target market know how the product is different from the competition by using data to locate the right audience and communicate with them constantly. 2 Speak your audience’s language. Don’t launch your product with a blanket campaign that tries to reach everyone. Understand your key demographics—everything from age to attitude to geolocation to shopper type—and coordinate your marketing plan by triangulating that information with similar data on various marketing platforms. 3 Evolve your strategy as necessary. As you deploy and test your initial marketing goals, take heed of what the audience is actually responding to. This will help you figure out how and where your efforts should be targeted. Don’t be afraid to…

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was about to join my very last “performance calibration session.” This was late in 2018, when I was a managing director at Instagram, and these sessions had been a common part of my life—just like they are at many big companies. They’re a time for senior managers to discuss the performance of their individual team members, applying common organizational standards across job levels. HR specialists moderate performance discussions on a biannual, sometimes quarterly, basis. Conceptually, there’s nothing all that weird about calibration. But that’s conceptually. I have held senior-level marketing roles at YouTube, Spotify, Google, and Instagram, so I’ve sat in on a lot of these. And the reality is this: A group of highly opinionated, often outspoken managers get together…