I’ve listed some entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and resources below to help you gain credibility and make your start-up look and feel much bigger!
*Get a free fax number- eFax
*Get free business cards- Vistaprint
*Get some cheap but powerful accounting software- Quickbooks *Online
*Get free customer relationship management software- FreeCRM
*Get a toll free phone number- GotVMail
That should help you get started! Let me know if I forgot anything…
Good grief! It’s been too long since I have posted and I feel bad for it. But I’m back and am excited to talk about what’s going on with myself, NYC and TEASY!
My update for now is that I’m still working at Jazz on the Park, The Tea Association of the US, Teasy and Extreme Entrepreneurship. Actually, I have taken a month off from the first two jobs in order to focus on the latter two, Teasy and the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour. You can imagine what working four jobs can do to you physically and mentally but I am excited at the prospect of being able to focus and go after my dreams.
I’ve spent the last few months in New York learning a lot about myself and the tea industry, connecting with people all over the world, and living with passion. I’ve discovered some of my weaknesses (with help from those around me) which include procrastination and basically being ADD so now I’m actively trying to marginalize them. Recognizing them is the first step and I am continuing to experiment with new ways to kick these bad habits. I would say that I was able to get through college on my natural intelligence. For those of you who know me, it isn’t a huge revelation to you that I didn’t study for anything and hardly paid attention in class. I was literally too busy reading about business and day-dreaming about running my own one day- true story. As a result, I received average grades but actually ended up doing better than a lot of other people that were studying their asses off-go figure. Some solutions I would suggest for those of you facing the same challenges include: doing the big hairy monster deed first and alotting small chunks of time strictly to work. This is helping me right now and I’ll elaborate on these solutions another time as I find out their true effectiveness.
New York is un-fucking-believable. It’s great. I saw Barack Obama speak two days ago at Washington Square Park, the weather is getting cooler, so I don’t have to put deodorant on every 30 minutes, and I continue to meet new people everyday. I love it.
Teasy is going well, certainly making progress as I will be traveling with the EET for the next month promoting our line of teas, and soon our line of innovative teaware. More to come on that front…
Until then, look out for the Teasy-Mobile, oops, I mean the EET RV on the road over the next month:
I must say that I’ve been having a great week and I’ve had some breakthrough moments that are benefiting me and my fledgling business tremendously. A lot of what has happened can be directly attributed to my volunteering at the Tea Association of the USA’s tea industry certification classes last weekend.
The classes lasted four days and consisted of four different classes. The first two classes were called “Foundations of Tea” in which I learned all about the stages of processing the Camelia Sinensis plant to create the five different teas (white, green, oolong, black, pu’erh), grading, naming, blending, scenting, and tasting this fine beverage. The third class was part of the third level of certification and it focused just on Oolong teas (some of my absolute favorites). Oolong teas are incredibly complex and have so many different tastes, notes, scents, and visual characteristics. This is because Oolong teas represent any oxidation level between 10% to 90% of the leaves. It’s absolutely mystifying (and delightful) how many types of teas can be made from this one plant! The fourth class consisted of Professional cupping and taught us how to professionally taste teas. This can be very important in selecting teas to sell because tea is an agricultural product and the taste can vary year to year so you need to be able to find the tea that best matches your line so you stay consistent, for your customers’ sake. I would guess that I tasted over 70 different teas using different conditions such as water temperature and steeping time. This allowed us to develop our tasting skills and olfactory descriptors. It was a great four days!
In addition to learning about and tasting tea, I was able to meet and network with like-minded people: TEA ENTREPRENEURS! I made many connections throughout the four days and will more than likely end up doing business with many of them. Along with connecting to the tea industry I came away from last weekend with some great ideas for my business (a drastic change to my business model) and some possible sales.
Lesson from this weekend: When considering becoming an entrepreneur in a particular industry you must find out if there is an industry association for your industry. By attending industry events, you meet new business contacts, learn the latest industry news, actually give yourself credibility, and give you ideas for your own business.
It’s been mentioned on Technorati and TechCrunch and I think it’s the wave of the future- potentially collectively rivaling FaceBook and MySpace. Niche social networking! Ok, maybe it’s a little early but you need to take notice of these new social networking sites catering to special interests:
Although these sites have a small number of users, I think they have potential to become very successful because they draw a smaller crowd that is intensely interested in a specific topic rather than a larger crowd remotely interested in a broad topic. Definitely a huge opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs as there are plenty more topics out there that need an online social network… like underwater basket weavers.
Here’s some social networking software you can buy online.
I beat odds. It’s what I’ve done throughout my life and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. I won’t say that my life has been incredibly hard but I certainly have not had anything handed to me on a silver platter- nothing wrong with that either, it’s just what makes my life interesting.
When I tell someone that I’m the only child of a single mother, they typically assume that I’ve been deprived of something throughout my life but I beg to differ. Yes, I was forced to grow up a little faster than most as I watched my mom work two or three jobs a week and sat home alone making dinner or entertaining myself. But I never felt like I was missing something because of my mom’s amazing dedication to raising me. She never missed a soccer game or track meet and supported me in everything I went after. In fact, I don’t feel as if I’m missing anything in my life because of our strong relationship. Statistics show that *most* children born into my situation have an uphill battle getting to college but I was recruited to run Cross Country and Track, after much hard work and training on my part, at Appalachian State and became the first in my family to earn a four year degree with the help of many scholarships and grants I had to apply for.
Another example would be when I came down with Reiter’s Syndrome at the end of my sophomore year. This was my body’s reaction to a stomach virus I ingested and gave me arthritis in the right side of my body for over six months, among other things. After surgery and while wincing with every movement, I studied for my final exams in the hospital, hobbled to class and got A’s and B’s on them. That summer, I decided I was not going to sit around and feel sorry for myself and took a full semester’s worth of summer classes and took up biking and lifting to help my body overcome the temporary arthritis.
These experiences in my life have been painful but the pain has served as a great teacher. The lessons I have learned from the adversity I’ve faced help me everyday when the odds are not in my favor. I like Booker T. Washington’s quote:
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
As an entrepreneur and the only employee in my company, it’s so important to be working towards my goals everyday because if I don’t, no one else will and the company will go nowhere. Realizing this has been incredible motivation for me to do one thing for Teasy each day even if most of the day has been set aside for one of my other jobs. Whether its designing packaging, tweaking the website, or writing e-mails to advisers, I need to be doing something just to keep the ball and my momentum rolling.
This can be applied to any goal you want to achieve; no one else cares as much about seeing your goal achieved than you so you must do something everyday to get to where you want to be. If you don’t, who will? You truly are The Lone Ranger!
I took this article from the GoBig Newsletter. Wil Schroter is the Founder and CEO of the Go BIG Network, the largest network of startup companies and entrepreneurs at www.goBIGnetwork.com. He is also the author of the new book Go BIG or Go HOME.
The Gary Coleman Effect
A long time ago when I was starting my first company (I was 19) a good friend of mine said that I had the “Gary Coleman Effect.” You may remember Gary Coleman as the child actor from the comedy series Diff’rent Strokes, although if you’re 19 now, you probably don’t know who that is. Maybe today it’s called the Dakota Fanning effect.
As a child, Gary Coleman was a considered a fantastic actor because kids his age rarely expressed such talent. No one could believe such a young kid could be so funny on camera. Years later it would be discovered that little Gary was a really, really bad actor. Yet at the time, his young age amplified what were otherwise mediocre talents.
The same applies when you’re young and starting a company. In the event that your company takes off like the perpetually 21-year-old Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has, you’re considered a genius. On the other hand, if your startup tanks the world simply says “Hey, he’s 21 years old, what else would you expect?”
Being young provides a period of your life where you get double the points if you succeed and lose no points if you fail. What you’ll learn later in life is that this opportunity is almost never offered again.
Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain
If you look at it in a very pragmatic way, the older you get the more liabilities you saddle yourself with. Before you know it you’ve got a high-paying career that’s too hard to walk away from, a family to support, and a big mortgage to pay.
The younger you are, the fewer liabilities you have. That means you can take incredible risks without having to worry about the liabilities that life introduces later on. If you’re a college kid living on less than $1,000 worth of expenses it is the best time in the world to get started. No matter what happens, you can always find a job to cover your overhead. It doesn’t work so easily when you have $10,000 per month in expenses!
Aside from the limited financial risk, you’ve got the upside of an incredible amount of potential experience. In your first job out of college (the first one is always crappy) you’re going to learn a little, but at only at the pace your employer offers you. If your manager leaves you doing mindless tasks for the first few years, you’re not learning nearly fast enough.
On the other hand, if you start a company, like it or not you’re going to have to learn as much as you can as fast as you can possibly digest it. It’s like hitting the fast-forward button for your career. Even if the venture doesn’t work out, you’ll gain more experience in one year of starting a company that you could possibly gain in a year working for someone else.
Start Young While You Still Can
The funny thing about your youth is that it can be your single greatest strength and weakness at the same time. You’re too young to realize how much you don’t know and yet don’t have the experience to realize why it would matter. So seize the opportunity while it stands without consequences it’s the last time it’ll ever be this risk-free!
I really debated whether to share this on the MOHIT blog all morning, but here it is: I have a phone job interview this afternoon with a financial services consulting company. I sent my resume to them about a month ago when I was looking for something to do in New York and a receptionist called me yesterday wanting to set up an interview. The conversation happened so fast that I didn’t really have much time to process what was going on and perhaps it was a bit of conditioning that made me setup an interview. In fact, I don’t even know what the position is… I’m guessing inside sales.
That was the bad news. The good news is that I don’t plan to waste this recruiter’s time. I plan to tell her that I’m pursuing my passion, hell, I’ll tell her I’m starting a tea company and ask her if she drinks tea, I just might make my first New York sale…
The subway is an amazing form of transportation. I absolutely love it and wish more people would use public transportation. Taking the subway reduces greenhouse gas emissions, relaxes traffic in the streets, and relieves your feet from walking!
While I was riding the subway home today after meeting Erica Lyn of Erica Lyn Photography a few things occurred to me that I thought I’d share:
I had a great time hanging out with some very like-minded friends last night. There is a blossoming young entrepreneurship community here in the NYC and I am incredibly elated that I am here to be a part of it!
One of the conversations we all had included the fine line between giving help and giving advice. Sometimes we feel that in giving advice we are helping someone when, in fact, we may be confusing the situation and possibly de-railing their idea. Finally realizing this last night was like an epiphany. I suddenly thought to all of the times I had asked for help and received advice or had tried to help someone else by giving advice. I think this is such an important concept to understand when seeking help and trying to provide it. One way to mitigate the risk of receiving advice instead of help is to strictly define how someone can help you and voice that in your conversation instead of leaving a vague question at the end of your pitch. Be sure to say things like, “You can help me by connecting me to your contacts in the retail industry,” or, ” You can help me by providing me with $10,000 in funding or referring me to someone that might be interested.” Be specific or you just may end up listening to a whole new business idea!
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