Rent a CFO

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal by Ray Flandez on renting a chief financial officer. There are quite a few such companies out there that can provide these services, and for the smaller firm they can be much more cost effective than hiring out that position. One other thought in that area is to find a great CPA and use that person as your CFO. In my manufacturing business, that’s what I did. Our accountant, Pete Stefanou, was a fantastic guy who was great at thinking outside the box, so it was well worth the extra cost to use him as our CFO. But if you choose to go that route, you need to make sure to keep the CPA up to date on things going on in your organization. In my case, I liked using Pete as a sounding board on new ideas, personnel issues, costs, pricing, etc. He was invaluable in helping me to grow, and then eventually to sell the business.

The Government Can!

Ran across this today at Jeff Cornwall’s site, The Entrepreneurial Mind. If you’d like to smile, take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO2eh6f5Go0

Artist's are Entrepreneurs Too

My daughter’s boyfriend this summer showed me a book by an artist who made cartoons on the back of business cards. The book, Ignore Everybody by Hugh Macleod, was a fun read, and it caused me to start reading his blog. Yesterday’s blog caught my attention, because it was titled “Artists Are Entrepreneurs and Marketers too.”

Here’s a piece of his post:

Artists– suc­cess­ful ones, any­way– have to create stuff out of thin air, then somehow find a way to sell it at a profit. The Art Purists will be horri­fied to hear this, but yeah, you really do need the mind of entre­pre­neur and a mar­ke­ter to be able to do that.

The Customer is Always Right…Uh, No!

There is the old adage, the customer is always right. Right? Well, no the customer is not always right and sometimes you even need to fire them. Take a look at the article from the NY Times; Know When to Fire a Customer.

This article brought to mind a particular incident when I owned a small resort in Wyoming. A large family was having a reunion at the resort, and they were incredibly difficult to deal with. No matter what my staff did, it wasn’t good enough. Because I happened to be at the resort that week, I took a personal interest in trying to sort out the matter. But no matter what I did, it just wasn’t enough to satisfy this demanding group. Finally, it was on day three of a seven night stay that I met with a group of the family members and told them that since we couldn’t seem to make their week a happy one, that I would find them accommodations elsewhere in the area where they would hopefully be able to enjoy the rest of their reunion. The family members immediately said that they didn’t want to move, that in fact they wanted to stay and it caused the entire dynamic of the relationship to change. They didn’t become the easiest group to deal with, but their constant bickering and complaining ended and I think they had a reasonably happy vacation. My approach worked; and while it won’t always be the right approach, sometimes you just have to say to your customer that you don’t want their business. Be careful when you do so, but sometimes it just has to be done.

Twitter and the Crisis

Ah…Twitter…what are we to do with you? As an entrepreneur, I’ve been trying now for some time to make sense of how to best use Twitter. And while I’m not quite ready to say it’s the best things since sliced bread…I’m also not ready to abandon it either. Take a look at an article from today’s Wall Street Journal titled, Entrepreneurs Tweet Their Way through Crises that discusses using Twitter when you are in crisis mode.

Here are some thoughts from the end of the article; note the caution about using Twitter occasionally or only when you need it.

Twitter can also be an effective way to get a message across to consumers in an emergency. When an ice storm struck the Bartlesville, Okla., area last winter, United Linen & Uniform Services notified customers about the status of their orders through Twitter in addition to its Web site. Scott Townsend, marketing director for the laundry service, says many consumers today will find information about a business on Twitter before anywhere else because it's where they hang out online. "You fish where the fish are," he says.

Entrepreneurs should bear in mind that Twitter is unlikely to be of help in dealing with a problem if it isn't used regularly otherwise, says Shel Israel, author of "Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods."

"If you just go to Twitter when you have a crisis, you will have no followers and no credibility," he says. "The key to using Twitter effectively is to build trust with people who are relevant to your business."

Steve Fusek, owner of Fusek's True Value LLC, a hardware store in Indianapolis, now has an employee dedicated to updating the shop's Twitter profile during business hours. Mr. Fusek says consumers expect to see frequent tweets and swift responses to customer-service inquiries they post.

"You can't just sign up and leave it. You have to have someone on it," he says. "If you're not legitimate, you'll be found out quickly."

Pay It Forward

Ran across this interesting blog on Reuters and (Let’s Work Together to Boost Entrepreneurialism) by Michael Gaiss, who is a Senior Vice President at venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners. In particular, I liked the first point:

Connect and enable the next generation of entrepreneurs. Much can be learned from those who have already done it. Barriers preventing the next generation from connecting with the existing entrepreneur community, as well as each other, need to be removed. Gatherings and one-on-one mentoring can be orchestrated to bring entrepreneurs of all stages together to better enable the free flow of ideas and advice. The challenge is to leverage existing institutions such as associations, universities, venture and angel networks, and relevant service providers to get these off the ground, while encouraging the organic emergence of new networking & mentoring platforms over time. As entrepreneurship evolves, what started as forums for sharing insight and advice matures into a vibrant and proven support ecosystem that entrepreneurs can rely on to help get their startups off the ground.

Entrepreneurs are the most giving of folks; looking to help out the next generation of business innovators. In most cases, the entrepreneurs want to help, but they don’t how or where to go to provide assistance. At Syracuse University, we’re trying to facilitate that flow of help and be a connecting point to match mentors with those who need the help. It’s really just an entrepreneurial way of paying it forward.

The Good Enough Revolution

Allen Kupetz sent over a piece from Wired Magazine that I’ve been forwarding around to folks interested in entrepreneurship here at Syracuse University. The article, The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine is getting some interesting comments from faculty and friends. Take the time to read it; it’s rather long but provides some things to think about for those of us who are creating the next product or getting ready to kick-out a great new service. It’s telling us that time is a limited and precious resource, and that the more complex a device is, the less we’re going to use it or maybe even want it.

The Flip's (video camera) success stunned the industry, but it shouldn't have. It's just the latest triumph of what might be called Good Enough tech. Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of us are carrying around dinky, low-power netbook computers that are just good enough to meet our surfing and emailing needs. The low end has never been riding higher. So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

And it's happening everywhere. As more sectors connect to the digital world, from medicine to the military, they too are seeing the rise of Good Enough tools like the Flip. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit.

The good news is that this trend is ideally suited to the times. As the worst recession in 75 years rolls on, it's the light and nimble products that are having all the impact—exactly the type of thing that lean startups and small-scale enterprises are best at. And from impact can come big sales. "When the economy went south before Christmas last year, we worried that sales would be affected," says Pure Digital's Fleming-Wood. "But we sold a ton of cameras. In fact, we exceeded the goals we had set before the economy soured." And this year? Sales, he says, are up 200 percent. (Another payoff: In May, networking giant Cisco acquired Pure Digital for $590 million.)

To some, it looks like the crapification of everything. But it's really an improvement. And businesses need to get used to it, because the Good Enough revolution has only just begun.