Some good articles from Inc Magazine on PR.

In this first one, I like the suggestions on using Twitter. When I first read this article, I tried to think of some events that could be thrown to get people excited. The tasting parties were way better than anything I came with. I think that will be the uniqueness of the product, champagne bubbles. Highlighting that and organizing events showing people how to enjoy that aspect is the best idea in my opinion.

This 2nd one just shows some good ideas for managing your PR. Getting to know reporters through social networking now seems perfect. I don't have businesses launched yet but I'm going begin establishing those connections.

Good Deal on Inc Magazine

For a Good deal on INC Magazine, go to
http://www.inc.com/keyword/offer

$5 for 1 year
$10 for 3
(woo!)

... moving on to .... ?

Ever since I started this blog, I looked forward to one day typing on here, "I'm moving my family to [some non-Utahn city here], and I'm going to work for [some very professional company here].

Well, I received 1 offer from an advertising agency that was going to let me go to Hawaii after about a year. But as I researched and even did a week of on the job training, I realized they were trying to go national with a business model that was never going to be sustainable for more than about 2 salesmen in the state of Utah....... I turned it down.

I've been consulting for another organization, but they are looking to hire hardware expertise and I have software..... maybe I just haven't sold myself by not stressing that I understand the market just fine.

And as I've thought about this "expertise," both what I have and what I want to do points me in 1 direction ---->> Terence, start your own company

This is the whole reason I came back to business school. Knowing how to start, manage, and grow my own company is the whole reason I got an MBA from BYU. I took every single class I could about starting a company.

The problem is, my plans all require some experimentation. I'm planning on relying on Page Rank for a lot of my advertising ..... a great strategy to build something on the side for a year or two until it reaches critical mass. Starting and depending on something immediately has not been in my plans (and I question if it is in the economy's).

And yet... I'm setup great to do it. Expenses are very low right now. I still have some consulting on the side so can cover those expenses. I don't have a work commute. To summarize: I have a lot of time to build a company.

I have to re-strategize, and figure out a different business model (still need cheap though). I have put together a lot a web-advertising software to use that should be useful. And I have to have a product delivered very quickly.

I am starting one
I will be starting my own company. I do still have a few interviews, and I'm going to dedicate an hour or two each day to the job search, but I'm going to start a company! :)

Right now, I'm focusing on web-news critical to certain industries like Tom's Hardware or Engadget. I am passionate about Scuba Diving and would love to be the Scuba leader on the web, but I haven't researched to see if that is a good starting point right now. I do have a few other industries that I have had some automated researches on though and will venture into there.

And I am reading over my Entrepreneurial Marketing & Strategy notes (my 2 favorite classes at BYU). Maybe there are some other ideas I haven't hit yet.

I wanted to start a blog dedicated to Social Entrepreneurship happenings around the world, but that will have to be delayed as well.

As my sites gain in popularity, I have some other ideas about selling communities to those who want to start one but not manage it...... and then of course my thousands of ideas. As time goes on, I'll come up with more and more.

These first steps will not build my big, international organization like I want, but they are stepping stones to get there.


Well, here it goes. Just got to give myself one more reminder:
Use your gut, but not too much emotion! Pay attention to why ideas make you nervous, and solve problems... do not just ignore them.

VC Snoman

Been Meaning to post this on the Blog for a while. I think this is a pretty funny video that I heard about while doing the intern thing at VSpring this last summer.

Speed Pitch || Business Plan Competition Event

My team competed in the speed pitch portion of BYU's business plan competition early this morning. That was a pretty fun event. And I learned a lot!

Brock Blake gave a good presentation about what speed pitching is. I took a few notes and I liked his focus on when investment money should be sought. I had never heard it summed so well that it is better to solve a pain than a want when his slide suggested "Pain Killers" not "Vitamins."

So another of my teammates did the first pitch. I think he did an amazing job. Our visual tools were screwed up because the color printer decided to steal my money instead of print my slides. We had only 1 slide of our website printed on a black and white printer.

After that, we watched another student present his idea. This student is someone I respect a lot. I think he is very confident. I have seen him get up in front of class and present some ideas that are pretty out there-- and be serious, and calm. Persuading us that his ideas are very good.

And what did I notice when he was presenting? His hands were shaking! This person who I didn't think could get nervous at all was a little rattled. It made me feel good because if he could get nervous then it was cool if I did............. I was 100% pleased with my presentation.

I've got more to improve on (we've been invited to pitch in the second and final round), but I couldn't be happier with how I performed and the confidence boost that comes from seeing that others are human.

............. and I'll admit some very organized practice helped too.

Reasons to Believe

In Dr. Whitlark's Entrepreneurial Marketing Class here at Brigham Young, one of the main principles discussed throughout the course is a "Need to Believe."

I was thinking that a quick way to establish if people are looking for a tool such as you've masterminded would be to use the free services at Trelian. Wouldn't work in all cases, but for some ideas that can be identified in two or three words, you could see if the solution is being sought.

There is more to Need to Believe than just this currently-sought aspect, but I thought this could be useful.

Execution & Strategy

I've been thinking about what I've learned from my internship and classes. I've gained a lot of technical skills over the last few years, and this has not helped me to start an internet company--- so what will?

I think it boils down to execution & direction. One needs to have a direction to go. Just after college, I worked for 2 different small companies whose owners were just winging it day to day--it was easy to see they were not going to stay in business long.

I've been pretty good at planning out the internet product, but then have had very loose plans for how I was going to advertise it. The internship this summer definitely taught me a lot about executing a go-to-market strategy.

Courses I've had this year like entrepreneurial strategy and entrepreneurial marketing (FYI, this professor is going to release a pretty good book on startup marketing so watch for it) have shown what to base a strategy on.

So now I can create a much more robust and useful strategy. Anything left? Oh yea, execution! Tom Hopkins used to say that the salesman with enough desire will succeed, but he now says he has changed his mind and its the salesman with the most discipline.

And I really think that discipline is one of my greatest weaknesses. Its fun to dream of the future-I love that part! But working for it? I get bored pretty easily. I'd rather just hangout with friends.

Of course seeing that I've got a good strategy and knowing how to define one should help me to trust it better and be more willing to give it my time.

MBA 669 - Entrepreneruial Strategy - The Wrap Up

My most useful class this semester was Entrepreneurial Strategy taught by Gary Williams. Great class taught by a man who has been very successful but has also had longings to be teaching in academia--I don't think you get a lot of people like that in business schools.

So we had to read 3 books for this class. Inside the Tornado, Innovator's Dilemma, & Good to Great. Looking for some Christmas reading material, I also asked about other potential reads and he suggested the popular books by the author's of the books above and also: Execution, and Blue Ocean Strategy. Looks like a great list of ideas and models to know before going to raise funding.

In separate teams we analyzed for different companies very deeply. This week, we had to give them a final strategy that we felt they should follow. Most of us anlayzed using G2G's Hedge Hog Model and ITT's Bowling Alley Model.

I've got Good to Great down pretty good, but ITT was packed with info. I've got to go back and learn this stuff a little better-- I think it will make me infinitely better at startups.

I also learned a higher degree of professionalism in this project. We were dealing with very busy professionals and had to earn their trust in order to be taken seriously. Sad to say, but I only give myself a 5 out of 10 on my professionalism & earning Allegiance's CEO's trust.

Oh yeah, Allegiance was the company we did this report on.

The learning of professionalism and modeling was great and I think it will serve me as I become a stronger business developer.

Putting a lot of thought into it this semester at BYU, I definitely want to get into Biz-Dev after my MBA.

Venture Capital perpetuates more Venture Capital

Check out this article on Venture Capital.

Didn't read real close, but basically VC Money out there is remaing the same, but those currently funded companies are having a harder time exiting, so sucking up more money until exit.

Do we have too many entrepreneurs out there? I doubt that. What I think is happening is Sarbanes Oxley has made it so difficult to go public that companies will be venture backed for longer looking for buyers instead of going public when they're hot.

Sad really, one of the reasons I went to BYU for an MBA was to get do some cool company building and exiting. I understand the need for security of people's money and retirements, but I think the next president is going to have to tackle the issue of not killing off companies with too much regulation.

I've been found!

Well, I just saw a letter from MBAMA saying they knew this was my blog. I haven't been broadcasting who I am because I am frankly a terrible writer.

Oh well, now that I've been found out, I guess I better step it up.

I start my internship on April 24th, and I have been working for Celio Corp. I really wanted to do marketing but at the same time go with a company that was in the Venture Capital Rounds.

Hope everyone is having good summer!

Best excerpt on Positioning / Advertising

For MBA 680: Strategy 2 We have been reading The Innovator's Solution. Chapter 3 of this book has by far my favorite advice on how to position and advertise a new product. I recommend this book to anyone trying to launch a new product. The whole book is great, but at the very least, you need to read chapter 3.

This Chapter refers to big-business's tendency to segment the market and find underserved opportunities. This is ok, but it doesn't help with products you've already made and it doesn't help you discover emerging markets or provide a whole lot of differentiating abilities because anyone else can easily imitate at this point.

Instead the advice in this chapter is to advertise to the Circumstances a Customer find herself in. What specific job is the customer hiring the product to do? This could be something like kill a little time, entertain myself, avoid studying, feel cool, or keep my job. Or many others.

Lets use entertaining myself, I could easily do this by reading a newspaper or magazine, playing a video game, watching the variety of people at my local 7-11, TV, amusement park........ almost an infinite list. See all these companies are competing with each other. So if I'm making a new news website, instead of just loading up with all the same news that everybody else has, I'd seek to display the news in an entertaining way. Then I'd be positioned as the news company you go to when you want to be entertained. I'm not a journalist website, I'm a entertainment website. I'm using the news to entertain instead of reporting the news.

Lots of other applications here, but I just wrote a very long (and probably confusing) paragraph so I won't pursue other apps further. Rest assured though, I am about to turn my computer off
work on an advertising campaign centered around what a certain business customer would be trying to do when I put my product in front of them.

BYU Students are Cheap!

So that's kind of a mean statement isn't it? I put it there because I am the one who is cheap! I started an LLC last year and I'm desperately, confusedly trying to do the taxes on it right now. I thought it'd be fairly easy with Turbo Tax. But let me tell you this... Turbo Tax has failed me! It keeps wanting to treat my company like a sole proprietorship.

For the last 2 weeks (weekend only) I have tried to get this annoying program to quit forcing me to report the company's income as my own. Finally, I just entered it and about 30 screens later, it asks me for form 1065 -- Income from an LLC. I even upgraded Turbo Tax to get this fixed.

So in the end, I'm cheap for not hiring an accountant. I will next year. Hopefully I'll also be more profitable next year, but if I'm not.... I'll still hire an accountant! I'm not cheaping out and buying something that robs my two-weeks and extra-money from me.

Business Plan Details

Last week, a private equity partner--Ron Mika-- attended my MBA 664 Venture Capital / Private Equity course and gave us a document on what he likes to see when a company is pitching itself to be bought by his firm.

I definitely think this list will be useful to me in the future and probably to thousands of the million of readers of this blog :)

Presentation Outline Suggestions:

Executive Summary ("Answer First"):

• Company/Industry/Transaction Overview
• Investment Thesis - Why why are we interested?
• Risks - What should we be concerned about?
• Proposed Deal Structure (Sources & Uses)
• Financial Cases (Management, Underwriting/Base, Downside)
• Financial Returns

Industry Detail

• Is this an attractive industry to invest in?
• Porter 5 Forces
• Growth
• Relative Market Share
• Speed of Change/Innovation
• Cycles
• Etc. --- (ok I agree, is there a need for an 'etc' in a list like this?)

Company Detail

• Is this an attractive company to invest in?
• Competitive Advantages
• Product Advantages
• Distribution Advantages
• Relative Cost Positon
• Technology of IP Position
• Management
• Etc.

Deal Detail:

• Deal Dynamics (Auction, Inside Track, Proprietary, Mgt. Reinvest, Etc.)
• Structure/Financing Terms
• Comparables (Trading & Transaction)
• Exit Scenarios
• Major Assumptions for Each Case (Mgt, Base, Downside)
• Bottoms-up P&L, B/S, CF
  
• Downside Protection - "How low can you go?"
• Excel Model

Obviously, this list is for a Private Equity firm, but there is still lots of applicability to those trying to raise Venture Capital. I imagine there are thousands of lists out there like this. I'm sure those are legit too, but I know this one is because of who gave it to me.

principles of an advertisement

I'm having some trouble sleeping tonight. I was asleep, but woke up with many thoughts about idea for the business plan competition. For HR, I'm reading the book E-Boys and it has me thinking that I must act "fast & decisively" to conquer everything..... honestly I think I woke up in a nightmare that I have to begin work immediately. (by principle, I can't give in to the pressures of nightmares)

I had what was probably the funniest experience of my college career today. In MBA 550, Dr. Whitlark was discussing the 3 components of a good advertisement:

• Product - people need to quickly see what your advertising
• Company - they need to know who's product this is (I can definitely see situations where this will be the same as product, but not all)
• Benefit - Show them why they should buy it

So we were looking at some ads that had been in various magazines. Some I was getting, some I wasn't (I discovered I am more of a sucker for creativity than good advertising than most my class)

One was for hotels-- one showing a very nice room and gentleman relaxing in it, the other showing room amenities and some catchy slogan. The one with the benefit-showing slogan won. Then, Dr. Whitlark gets up there and says, "I don't know, this one is a good advertisement if you're in the market for a half-naked man."

It was so funny! I could not stop laughing. He's good a providing a very jovial atmosphere, but this time I was in uncontrollable fits of laughter. I was still laughing about 10 minutes later. I am a little scared that I just had my best experience in the MBA program at BYU and I'm only a few weeks into it. :)

Business Plan Kick Off --> Kicked Off

Yesterday was the kickoff for BYU's Business Plan Competition. Wow! Did they do a bad job at that event. What was supposed to be an information session turned into a hard-to-hear pep-rally. I think I won't go to the info. session next year and I'll just get the schedule on their website. The least they could have done was make sure that the speakers worked in the back. Instead nobody could hear and so we all just talked.

The Competition itself is pretty cool though. I think I'll launch my company on the internet in about 2 weeks an then work on building that up. As for a team... I'm not sure what I'll do. I really don't want one. Also if I can make it profitable, I'm not sure I'll need one. Also, if I can make it profitable, I won't need to win the competition anyway. I think this may be the most arrogant paragraph I've ever put in this blog.


The competition is open to all students at BYU: under-grad, grad, MBA (yes!), and everyone else. There are also some differing categories: ebusiness, charitable, work-from-home.

It was funny, they admitted that the work-from-home category (with a $5000 first winner prize) is focused more on women. I mean 'Duh!' but can you actually say that? Will gender be one of the judging categories?