Start a business with your family?
Posted on June 28, 2008
One of the questions you should answer before starting a business without outside investment is where to find workforce willing to work at least for a period without having huge financial demands. You simply don’t have the money to pay for employees in the beginning, so you will have to look elsewhere.
Most likely you will first look at your family and friends - they could be helping you at least for a while, until you make enough money to hire on the open market. But is that good or bad?
In my case, when I founded my company, I’ve started it with my girlfriend and her sister for 2 reasons: we seemed to be doing a very complete team (my girlfriend is a PR specialist, her sister a designer and I was doing a bit of coding and taking care of the legal stuff). And the second, we all where available to work with little or no payment, at least in the beginning.
But was that good in the end? It’s hard to say. We did things that we couldn’t have done if we weren’t “family”, but it also prevented us doing other things that we could have done with regular employees. There are at least a few items that are different when working with family or friends:
The bad parts when starting a business with your family:
- it’s very hard to impose a decision. You will basically ending up being more bosses for the same thing and it’s very hard for one person to decide something and the others to follow. Because there are no hierarchies.
- Normally, as a company owner having regular employees, you don’t have to worry so much about the profit. Of course you do, but you don’t have to discuss this with all your “employees”.
- When things go wrong, it’s hard to blame, and it’s even harder to correct things. Things get personal most of the time
The good parts when starting a business with your family:
- No matter if you are away, there is always somebody from your family keeping a careful eye on what’s going on with the business. The level of trust is higher
- You could ask your family to do things that a regular employee wouldn’t do. Like staying up all night to finish something. Or spending a weekend for a project.
- If it goes well, it goes well for all your family.
I’ve found an interesting article written by Small Business Diva (Donna-Marie Coggins) that talks about Hiring Friends Or Relatives. I will comment on that:
- Strong Personal Relationships Are Not Guarantees Of Compatible Working Relationships. Agreed, as I soon found out after founding my company, all 3 of us had very distinctive business approaches. Starting from different goals and up to the way we worked with the customers.
- Strong Personal Relationships Are Not Guarantees Of Compatible Working Relationships. Something else that is crucial to consider is how well suited or qualified your friend or family member is for the position he or she will hold. Being a nice person or a deserving person does not make you qualified for a job. Agree as well, having somebody on board that is not qualified will greatly negatively influence the other “regular” employees and the overall outcome.
- Preventing And Managing Disagreements And Difficulties. If you are entering into a business partnership with friends or family, you must clearly define the relationship, roles, and responsibilities ahead of time. As mentioned by me earlier, this is probably one of the most difficult things when working with your family.
Here is the rest of the article: Should You Hire Friends Or Relatives?
- Ben Means Business comments on my Delegate in a small business article
- What are you working for?
- Start up products or services - good enough for your family or friends
- One year part time entrepreneurship!
- 2008 Small Business Survey Results
» Filed Under Entrepreneurship | 2 Comments
Trouble finding innovative business ideas?
Posted on June 28, 2008
Most often people are afraid starting a new business because they can’t find that unique idea that would make their business great. They think that if they don’t come up with an innovative idea, they are unable to make money and their business will fail.
I remember having these thought myself 3 years ago when I founded my company. It seemed that everybody was doing the same and that meant a new business couldn’t stand a chance.
Funny thing is that actually most business are completely non-innovative, and my advice is as well to start with something, even if it’s not unique. Starting with something is always better than not doing anything waiting for that great idea to happen.
I have 2 resources to support my thoughts. First would be Jessica Livingston’s book “Founders at work” (my review here). Jessica has collected an impressive set of stories and interviews how big boys (now) actually started their businesses - Hotmail, Bloglines, Gmail and all the rest. If you go through the book, you will get that most of the business that now worth millions started by something simple (i.e. a site done in college years) and some don’t even made money for quite a while. And most importantly, their founders never started thinking it’s going to be the next holly grail, and some failed few times before doing it right.
The second resource, is Angus Loten’s article called “The Accidental Millionaires“. “Some of the best business ideas happen almost by accident. From the inventors of the Slinky to the couple behind the software that powers much of the blogosphere, a look at entrepreneurs who took adversity and half-baked ideas and turned them into wildly successful companies.”
Here are some samples from Angus’s article:
- Richard and Betty James
Previous Life: Navy tool worker and homemaker
Big Break: Saw a spring coil fall off a table
Bottom Line: Called it a Slinky and sold 250 million of them - Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen
Previous Lives: College students
Big Break: Created a website to trade jokes while attending different colleges
Bottom line: The site now boasts more than 8 million unique visitors a month - Carole Nash
Previous Life: Laid-off receptionist
Lucky Break: Was given a small portfolio of insurance policies as a severance package
Bottom Line: Recently sold her insurance businesses for more than $100 million.
What about me? As probably any entrepreneur out there, I’m still looking for that great idea. But in the meanwhile I’ve founded a “regular business”. And this greatly improves my chances to find that innovative business idea.
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- How to start a business from your corporate cube: a response
- Entrepreneur interviews
- Entrepreneur interviews
- Ideas to start business on the cheap
» Filed Under Innovative Business Ideas | Leave a Comment
Part time entrepreneurship
Posted on June 27, 2008
Being a part time entrepreneur for the past 3 and something years and a a blogger as well, gave me plenty of opportunities to see the goods and the bads and also summarize the experience in several posts along the way.
If you are looking to find out the advantages and disadvantages of moonlight entrepreneurship, there is plenty of information that you can google. Right now, I can point you to some articles I wrote before and a couple of new articles I found. Let’s start with my articles:
- 5 reasons not to be a part time entrepreneur - where I’ve explained that entrepreneurship is not for everybody - you have to have the right mindset and be prepared to change your lifestyle for it
- 5 reasons to take the part time entrepreneurship path - these are the goodies.
Talking about entrepreneurship on a generic note (so not necessarily as a part time experience) I’ve got some more articles to look for:
- Top 3 requirements for an entrepreneur - where I actually explained that you can fail at everything people expect that an entrepreneur needs to do and still be a successful entrepreneur
- There is something wrong with entrepreneur’s minds - to get to the good parts of the entrepreneurship you will have to make sacrifices
Now, I’ve said I’m going to also point you towards some new articles I found about part time entrepreneurship:
Donna Pacheco’s article Be A Part-Time Entrepreneur - Top 3 Reasons Why You Should Consider Doing Your Business Part-Time.
Donnna is from Philippines and has a nice set of articles on entrepreneurship mostly geared towards inventor entrepreneurship. Let me comment what she says:
- Being a part-time entrepreneur minimizes risks. Correct, it minimizes business risks, mostly because even if you go under you will still have the 9 to 5 paycheck at the end of the month. On the other hand however, it greatly increases the “family risk” - no more time for being a dad, mom, friend or husband. In fact you don’t get time for anything else that there is. Good news, you can usually cut TV and do your stuff instead. TV is evil!
- A part-time business will help supplement your income. Yes, it should, but don’t expect mirracles from a part time business. It’s far more harder increase revenues from a business than prom the 9 to 5 paycheck. People fail to realise how hard is to make money with a business, and think that entrepreneurship will automatically make them rich (”I will get all the profit only for me”). Wrong.
- A Part-time business is a way to channel your creativity. Sometimes the 9 to 5 job is indeed limiting creativity and building up frustration. Getting home and do whatever you feel like doing within your own company it’s usually a good way!
The second resource is Yanik Silver who actually wrote a book on Moonlighting on the Internet and he gives in this article a good overview on 5 Perfect ‘Spare-Time’ Online Businesses:
- Information marketing. “Ninety-two percent of people go online looking for information, and you could be one of the many people cashing in on selling it.“
- eBay: “One of the largest online marketplaces makes it a piece of cake to get your own business going. You can open an account and start making money within hours on eBay!”
- Affiliate marketing. “you can get paid a referral commission just for sending people to sites (or vendors) that are set up to pay affiliate fees once a sale is made.”
- Blogging. “This business is best suited for folks who enjoy communicating about a particular subject.”
- Yahoo! Store: “This business is very similar to eBay in the sense that it’s a monster-sized marketplace but more similar to a store in the true sense of the word. “
Hmmmm. Ok.
- Entrepreneurship as an “Opportunity enhancement”
- 5 reasons not to be a part time entrepreneur
- Part time Entrepreneur dilemma: changing jobs
- Romanian Entrepreneurship Blog
- Advice for the part time entrepreneur: your regular job
» Filed Under Entrepreneurship | Leave a Comment
Microbusinesses in Philippines
Posted on June 26, 2008
I’ve got an article from INQUIRER.net “Filipino micro-business owners face a myriad of problems, foremost of these is the inability to take their businesses beyond the day-to-day peso-and-centavo earning grind.”
“A typical micro-businessman in the Philippine setting is the owner of a sari-sari store in an urban poor community. He (or she) is mostly contented to wait for the patronage of his neighbors and accidental passers-by.”
The good news for the microbusinesses in Philippines is that they can get help from Ka-Entrep, an initiative which is partly funded and supported by a group of micro-entrepreneurs from Belgium. “Filipino micro-business owners need to look beyond the day-to-day operations of their operations to become true entrepreneurs, says Palou Abustan, a resource person in the character formation workshops of Ka-Entrep, an organization committed to empowering micro-business entrepreneurs.”
If you kept track of my articles, I’ve already wrote about SME Insight Magazine from Philippine and later about 7 steps to start a business - advices from the Philippines
. If you are wondering about how is doing a business in Phippines, the Doing Business 2008 in Phippines is gathering the most important statistics. You could however have a better glance from the US Department of Commerce resources about Philippines . Here are the main ideas from the report:
- The Philippine business environment is highly personalized. A proper introduction by a trusted intermediary is the best way to enter this market.
- Filipino contacts prefer an atmosphere of calm and restraint, avoid direct confrontation, and would typically offer a polite reply coupled with a smile rather than an outright negative feedback to the other party’s ideas.
- Philippine business has its own etiquette. For example, as a show of respect, Filipinos usually address people by their titles (e.g., Architect Cruz, Attorney Jose, Dr. Romero)
- English is the official business language
Here is the complete report on doing business in the Philippines.
- More on Philippines entrepreneurship
- 7 steps to start a business -advices from the Philippines
- Asian economic boost - doing business in China
- Part time entrepreneurship
» Filed Under Doing business in Philippines | Leave a Comment
StartUpArabia - a blog dedicated to new Arab technology startups
Posted on June 23, 2008
As you know I have a thing about finding out how is Entrepreneurship in parts of the World that doesn’t seem to have a “natural” inclination towards starting a business, I was very happy to find “StartUpArabia is a blog dedicated to new Arab technology startups and services, profiling and reviewing them, providing interesting market news and information, and sharing tips and advice for entrepreneurs.”
The blog covers interesting subjects from the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates.
I was initially attracted by the “Young Arab Leaders Launches Entrepreneurship Initiative”. The ‘Entrepreneurship Initiative’ aims to nurture innovation among young, small and medium entrepreneurs in the region and provide them opportunities for training mentoring and networking. Through the programme, they will learn from the experiences of other start-up and early-stage companies in the region and receive mentorship from YAL members.
“A Pilot Programme will be launched soon as the initial phase of the entrepreneurship initiative; During this phase, select entrepreneurs would be going through the outreach, assessment, training and access to funding of the ‘Entrepreneurship’ programme to prove the adaptability and compatibility of the initiatives’ strategy and working model to diverse scenarios. Entrepreneurs will be selected from diverse sectors in three pilot countries - UAE, Egypt and Jordan.”
The best way to check the quality and diversity of the information is browsing down from the homepage. Right now they are talking about trust in Arabian startups, Travel Yolk, Travel Industry Online Recruitment Portal, and have an Interview With Questler Founder Razan Khatib.
Interesting. Also found out that the biggest challenge for an IT start-up in the Arabian countries is funding and Inmature advertising market.
Here we go, http://www.startuparabia.com/
Also found out that the first issue of the Arabic edition of the well known monthly magazine Entrepreneur is published starting the beginning of June for the MENA region.
Johara Aletaishan, Chairperson of the new magazine, said:
“The aim of our new magazine is to promote the entrepreneurship culture among youth in the MENA region.
Neil Perlman, President of Entrepreneur Media Inc. – said :
“Entrepreneurial leaders drive economic success for themselves and their respective communities, and we’re pleased the first issue of Entrepreneur – MENA will carry this message to the region’s Arabic language countries. It’s invaluable for us to have the magazine’s message translated by Sawahel Al-Jazeera Ltd. to support young leaders in their entrepreneurial pursuits.”
Source of the article about the Entrepreneur magazine here.
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» Filed Under Doing Business in Arabia, Doing business | Leave a Comment
