Great Resource for Entrepreneurs in Certain Industries

The business and economic development oriented literature is ripe with articles about entrepreneurship.  So many pieces look at the entrepreneur and his success.  Lots of pictures and little discussion on the help received.  Very few focus on the assistance available, utilized, needed or how to access critical resources.

In economic development, I generally see organizations publish books with the title of  "Guide to Establishing a Business in..." or "Resources Available to an Entrepreneur in...".  These publications focus on legal, tax, registration and requirements to start a business in a specific city or county. All resources have a local or regional focus.  They do not look at help beyond a predetermined territory.  For most businesses that would likely suffice. However, for certain entrepreneurs, this type of publication may not go far enough. 

Last week Bloomberg BusinessWeek published an article about Maker's Row.  Maker's Row was founded by Matthew Burnett and Tanya Menendez.  It is an article worth reading. The link is at the end of the post. Their objective:

"Maker’s Row is the home of Made in America for the 21st century. We enable brands to find manufacturers to create products here in the United States. Our mission started off with manufacturing in America. We wanted to: make the manufacturing process simple to understand and easy to access."

So what did they do? They created a full service platform to help entrepreneurs in certain industries.  They started with a database that contains over 7,000 factories.  Most of the listings are either apparel/accessories or furniture/home decor firms.  In depth factory profiles are comprehensive. The database allows a person to either search for a company to help create a product or for a factory owner seeking new customers.  For certain services, the website requires a fee or subscription.

The site offers podcasts for start-ups. An entrepreneur can also find assistance in design, prototyping, and mass production.  For any new business venture in these industries, this is a real resource.  Rural firms can seek potential partners not located in the immediate area.  

Basically, they created a virtual manufacturing platform and entrepreneurial assistance program utilizing U.S. factories.  It is the kind of service I trust many professional economic developers would like to have developed. It is the next step to the guide or resource noted in the second paragraph of this post.

If this could be duplicated for other industries, it could be an additional resource for entrepreneurs and economic development professionals.  Examples would be metalworking, finance, etc. 

To me, this is an exciting concept.  I always wanted to create something like this, but I did not have the expertise.  It is the type of service that clearly demonstrates an understanding of the challenges facing an entrepreneur and a business model that helps solve critical barriers to success.  It also offers the benefit of matching a new venture with the best partner no matter where either is located. 

Sometimes I think economic developers face a difficult choice. We want and encourage our local firms to partner with local start-up ventures.  However, for any one firm and especially for an entrepreneur, we also want to help them find the best fit in terms of services offered and cost, even if it is located outside our service territory.  After all, what drives their success is slightly different than one of an established business.  

On the Maker's Row website, be sure to read the "Why We Are Creating Maker's Row" page. It is one the reasons I think people start businesses.  They could not identify or easily find a service or product that they needed to make the venture a success.  Maker's Row is an entrepreneurial business helping other new ventures succeed.  

Link to the article:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/maker-s-row-a-guide-to-made-in-america

Link to Maker's Row:  http://makersrow.com/

Majestic

One of my favorite shows is CBS Sunday Morning.  The segments are longer and classier.  I always learn something.  

For example, this is a segment on the renowned portrait painter John Singer Sargent.  I learned he was much more than a portrait artist. He was multi talented in oils and water colors. He preferred to paint his friends in a less rigid setting.  Unlike his portraits, which were perfect, he could paint them as they were. It occurred to me as I was writing this, his portraits are like professional photographs today. If you look as his portraits, he appeared to touch them up too. 

Link to segment:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-singer-sargents-portraits-of-artists-and-friends/

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship and small business. The hottest trend. If you take a look, you see colleges and universities offering classes on entrepreneurship, just to name a few.  Note the growth of starting a business and entrepreneurship in bookstores.

This is my one of my favorite examples of entrepreneurship.  I enjoy good books.  My preferences are biographies, current events and political history. In the past I had trouble finding books I would read about but not at the library. This is an example (see end of post).  Unless you lived in Vermont for any length of time or are interested in Congress, you likely have no idea who he is. Do not be concerned, I do.

Jeff Bezos and I share a common love, at least I think we do.  We are both readers.  And I love my Amazon Kindle.  That is another post.

When you have a unique interest, sometimes you think you are alone. I would go to used book stores seeking my unique genre. Most of the time, my searches were fruitless. Several books I am interested in are out of print, a real challenge.  Oh occasionally I would get lucky. Like when I found Gary Hart's books at the Tattered Cover in Denver. Yes, it makes sense. Sen. Hart represented Colorado for two terms.  If you are in Denver, this bookstore is worth a stop.  Link to store.  http://www.tatteredcover.com/

Back to Mr. Bezos and me. Most people forget this. Amazon started as a way to connect book lovers with independent book stores. Or to put it another way, it was an online book store. Now, I can search for books I have always wanted to read and get them shipped to me quickly and likely at a greatly reduced price. And I can find out of print books.

So why is Mr. Bezos an entrepreneur? He saw a need, he figured out how to fill it, created numerous new markets, and changed the way some people did business. His model was disrupting.

This is where Mr. Bezos proved to be a real entrepreneur. He did not stop with the online book store, he branched out.  Over the past 21 years, Mr. Bezos grew Amazon into many logical markets.  Consider this, if you said Amazon 20 years ago, most people would think about a jungle. If you said it today, most people would think "great shopping alternative."

Yes, Mr. Bezos is a true entrepreneur.  However, I will always be grateful to Mr. Bezos for connecting me to the world of independent book stores.  I continue reading books in my unique genre and continue enjoying out of print books.

Virginia Board of Workforce Development Strategic Plan

In my business you read or are sent strategic plans by organizations. Of course you may also participate in formulating a strategic plan.  A strategic plan offers a path to a goal that a majority of the participants hopefully endorse. It offers staff a guideline for work related activities.

In its simplest form, a strategic plan identifies an issue/issues with supporting analysis and empirical data, provides objectives, offers concrete goals, includes a timeline, and concrete measurements.  Sounds easy?  It is not.

This is one of the better ones.  Notice the structure. Objectives are clearly stated, strategies link to the objectives, measurements are clear and easily understood.

Link to the strategic plan.

http://www.elevatevirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/VBWD-Strategic-Plan_final.pdf

Employees and Employers

This article really disturbed me. It is about employee engagement.  The article is based on an extensive and detailed study conducted by Deloitte. The title of the study is "Global Human Capital Trends 2015".  According to the article author and Deloitte study, we are in a new world of work.The workplace has shifted in favor of employees, at the expense of the employer.

The biggest challenge for employers is employee engagement. Think about that.  For any business to be competitive and an enjoyable place to work, it needs employees to be engaged and invested. Employees have more flexibility and freedom and consequently can choose not to be invested. Is it that employers do not know how to foster engagement?  Is it that employees have decided my energy is better spent outside my career or place of work?  No winners here.

A link to the article:

http://www.staffingtalk.com/employee-engagement-and-retention-a-high-priority-problem-for-employers

A link to the Deloitte study:

http://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html

Keurig is the Downfall of Corporate America and While Building Productivity

Okay, it is not the downfall of corporate America.  However it does build productivity. 

The Keurig represents a decline of a different kind.  First, a word or two about the Keurig.

It is a remarkable machine when you think about it.  You can make any type of coffee you want (provided the flavor exists) in a matter of minutes.  No waiting around. In our office kitchen I count four different flavors of coffee and one tea.  The brand in our office is Green Mountain.  Now if you go to the Keurig website, I count 233 K-Cup flavors of coffee, tea, hot cocoa, etc. And 43 different brands.  (You get the idea).  Talk about choice! 

The Keurig is rapidly replacing the standard coffee machines in offices.   One of the best aspects of working in an office with colleagues is the morning coffee routine.  That is when a full pot of coffee (12 cups) is brewing and several people are standing around waiting to pour a cup.  Usually, you would talk to your colleagues about something of interest, like the weather, sports, weekend activities, etc.  Now, co-workers  make a cup and leave.  No more standing around and engaging in idle chitchat. Back to the desk.  Productivity increases (bet you thought I forgot about this one).  But camaraderie decreases because you know less about your colleagues.  In some respects, the morning coffee is the glue of an office and the relationships among individuals.

But no more.  We celebrate individual choice; hence we satisfy our craving or want. But we lose one more fiber of collective gathering for no reason other than a shared love of coffee or tea.

A second issue with the Keurig is now I do not get a sense of how people take their coffee or tea. You can tell a lot about how people take their coffee. Do they add a sweetener and milk? If so, do they add it one spoonful at a time and then taste it?  Do they add the sweetener and/or cream before or after they pour the coffee?  Some people are stirrers.  Do they have a particular sweetener and cream they use or prefer?  Are they trying to change (like cut back on the sweetener or cream)?  If so, is it because they read or heard something?  Worth a question if a person changes his habits.  Frankly, I think it is an interesting dynamic to watch.  Alas, I am transparent, since I drink my coffee black, I have never had those issues.

Side note: anyone who knows me understands why I drink my coffee black. My mother refused to let my sister and I put anything in coffee when we asked. Her immortal words “You must learn to drink it black.”  So I have ever since.

The final issue with the Keurig is the sheer waste.  I know many a staunch environmentalist who thinks nothing about the number of K-Cups added to the landfill daily.  Whereas a pot of coffee is simply coffee grounds (from Mother Nature) and a recyclable coffee can or plastic container.  Minimal waste.

So what is the answer? No more Keurig, back to the coffee pots. The coffee pots are old and should be new again.