Nathan Snell :: The Technopian

The 3M’s of Entrepreneurship, and the myth

If there’s one thing I’ve heard time and time again as an entrepreneur, it’s how we will be sacrificing our marriage, our mastercard, and our mortgage - what’s known as the 3M’s.

Now, as an entrepreneur, sacrificing your mastercard or your mortgage is simply unavoidable. You quite nearly always have to put a stake in the company to raise funding (to show you’re going to stick around), which usually involves leveraging your assets (a mortgage), and if you’re trying to bootstrap the company, it usually also involves maxing your mastercards (yes, cards). But when it comes to the 3M’s, it’s the sacrificing your marriage part that I just can’t agree with.

The issue I have with marriage being a part of the 3Ms, really, is its very inclusion in the 3Ms. See the nature of the 3M’s is that they are components of entrepreneurship that are quite nearly unavoidable. We are therefore saying that marriage is another component of entrepreneurship that we just can’t help but sacrifice, and that’s simply not true.

In fact, I would wonder for the potential success of those entrepreneurs who allow marriage to be just another sacrificed part in the company-building process. After all, marriage is a commitment to a person for as long as they both shall live. If an entrepreneur is so easily willing to let that kind of commitment fall by the wayside, it not only shows a potential lack in priorities, but makes me wonder just how long I can trust their commitment to their own company. Their customers may not be as forgiving as their wife or husband might be.

Taking a less philosophical look at why I disagree with marriage being part of the 3 sacrificial M’s - the support added by one’s spouse can be of phenomenal benefit not only to the health of the entrepreneur, but to the health of the company. For example, Stacy and I aren’t even married, but applying the same notion to even a courtship relationship, Stacy helps me to encourage my team, arrange special get-togethers for my team, and even helps with blog posts (I love business, and God bless her, she usually listens to my ramblings on it well) by e-mailing me quick notes on something business related we had talked about that got me excited and might convert well into a blog post. Fundamentally, as a spouse should, she helps me be a better business man, and I know I am not the only person who has someone along side them like that.

Which leads me to my disagreement for marriage being included in the entrepreneur’s 3M’s. It not only places marriage’s value on the same playing field as money, or worse, in the same category as debt, but it also creates an inherent excuse for entrepreneurs to use if they do end up forsaking their marriage.

When it comes down to it, both from my own experience, and my experience with entrepreneurs, the “Marriage” part of the 3M’s is a myth. Were there hard times, as is the case with life itself? Sure. Did that mean that those entrepreneurs ever for a second thought their marriage was an element up for sacrifice? From what they said to me, no. If sacrificing your relationship for your company isn’t a myth, perhaps you should evaluate just what kind of support you’re missing out on.

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The new year swing

Last I wrote I was heading to California to visit family for Christmas. I traveled there and back safely and with only a 1 hour delay out of 4 flights (God be praised!). Unfortunately, some of the writing I also spoke of hoping to do simply didn’t happen. It had been a year since I had seen my nephews (one is 5, the other 3 1/2) and apparently I forgot just how distracting two little rascals can be… especially when Uncle Nathan is around.

Never the less, I am back now and am writing a few things up now that I think will be interesting to you all. I certainly hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. I know I certainly did as I discovered that on my birthday (January 2nd), the eStore that my divison runs at National Speed apparently grew by 80% from the month prior, and is on track to maintain said growth. Good stuff.

Of course, my excitement for the National Speed eStore growth rate was probably amplified by the amazing 2 day birthday plans Stacy put together for me. I think I’m even more excited for Stacy and I’s projected love growth rate than National Speeds. Aha, I know… horrible combination of business and romance. But someone’s got to do it.

How was your New Year?

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Safe Journey!

I’ll be traveling today and tomorrow as I head to CA for Christmas. You can still expect to see updates from me, though. I have a number of posts in the works that I think you all will enjoy (stuff on twitter and whether it’s worth it, the innovative organization, entrepreneurship, marketing, etc). My flights should give me ample time to finish them up :)

To the other people who are traveling for the holidays, I pray your trips are safe!

Also, if you’re in CA and want to meet up, shoot me an email and we will see what we can put together!

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The criteria for innovation

When we spoke of innovation while I was in the Cameron School of Businesses’s entrepreneurship program, I always felt like something was missing. Often times the business ideas that students came up with were still the same sports bar, bed and breakfast, and restaurant from years past. Now, it really could be that America needs another sports bar or that this next student is going to rejuvinate the bed and breakfast market (both unlikely). But it could also be that some students are a bit misguided as to what exactly constitutes innovation here as none of those business ideas are really innovative (don’t even start with how components of them could be).

I think part of the reason for the misconstrued direction of innovation is because often times people don’t have a solid criteria for what constitutes innovation. If I made a wireless Christmas tree, that’s not innovative (though wireless Christmas lights might be…), it’s just an incremental change. It’s just making a better widget.

To me, the best criteria for innovation is a product’s potential not just for success, but to move beyond being a market grower, and become a market creator. If your product causes new businesses that otherwise couldn’t have existed before to now enter into the market, that is an innovative product.

eBay, for example, was an innovative idea. Their website wasn’t just a market grower, but a market creator. Their site allows millions of people to suddenly become a business and doesn’t just give them the ability to sell things online, but an audience to sell them to. eBay also caused the blossoming of books upon books about how to make money on eBay, and even consultants or lessons on the matter- jobs that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

The iPhone’s AppStore is another good example of an innovative product (or in this case platform) that didn’t just grow the cell phone market, but created an entirely new market. In the AppStore’s case, it created a number of new software businesses, and as developers continue to harness and push the potential of the innovative device, I am sure we will begin to see even more businesses grow out of this new market.

None of this is to say that building a business off of incremental changes won’t lead to having a successful business. On the contrary, comparing the potential risk of innovation based on my criteria to approaching product development through incremental change, the ROI based on the risk is in favor of incremental change (according to Winning At New Products: Stage-Gate). Let’s just be sure not to call it innovation.

Fundamentally what it comes down to is what kind of change do you want to be a part of, and what kind of change do we want to encourage? Are you interested in making a better widget? Or are you interested in starting a company that will create a new foundation for other companies to build upon- because that’s innovation.

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Improve your blogging credibility by building a story

I realize it’s a bit narcissistic to blog about blogging, especially given that I haven’t been. But whenever I start reading some of my favorite bloggers like Penelope Trunk or Holly Hoffman, I always notice they both do one thing very well that really builds their credibility and authorial authority (I think that works).

That one thing is they build a story between their posts. What I mean is within the post that they’re writing, not only do the reference information outside their blog (which is another great way of adding authority) but they also reference other material they’ve written within their blog. Geek sidenote: This is actually called inlinking. For example, Penelope does a great job in inlinking in this post, and it really adds authenticity and authority to it. You can also see me starting to do it here.

Referencing other posts you’ve written shows consistency and it shows purpose. If you’re referencing something you wrote a week ago, or a month ago, then you’re probably not posting arbitrarily and what you’re writing is building on your past, meaning your concepts are consistent and accurate (unless of course you’re referencing a previous post saying that you were wrong…).

Additionally, inlinking to other posts of yours a great habit to get into as it increase the amount of time people spend on your site (always nice) and improves their experience as they get more information regarding what they first started reading about.

So as you’re writing your next few posts, or thinking just what you can write about, think not only about the story within the current post, but think too about the story you’re telling inbetween posts.

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What I’ve been up to

I’m not going to pretend that you immensely care what I’ve been up to, but I figured since you’ll start to see some posts flowing through here again (hooray!), you all deserve the courtesy of me at least saying something about what’s gone on as opposed to pretending I never had a huge lull in my blogging rabbits habits (the strikethrough was just an amusing typo I decided to leave. blogging rabbits!).

As far as what I’ve been up to- a lot. The funny thing about working ~65+ hours a week and having my incredible girlfriend, Stacy, that I know I don’t want to lose or have feel neglected is that it’s hard to manage my time.

Of course, added in to that is I’ve also been speaking at least once a month, either at the University here or on internet technology/web 2.0 panels, as well as been involved in a number of advising meetings or on advisory boards.

On the National Speed front, my team and I have launched 3 sites in the past 2 months, two of which are ecommerce stores, and I’ve also been putting together the backend system and processes for both of those. Granted, I’d say the hardest part of it all is driving traffic to those sites, but that’s a post for another day (any feedback on driving more traffic to websites, send it my way! I’m always up for more ideas!). The sites, by the way, is the eStore I run for National Speed where we sell performance parts. The other site is Momentum Performance, our site and estore for their performance upgrades.

And of course the list just keeps going on, but those are the fun parts of it. The awesome part about it all, of course, is that it means I get to bring better insight and knowledge to you all. So thank you for being patient with me : )

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Business developer or entrepreneur?

We recently had a committee meeting for the development of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Emerging Ventures that will be created in Wilmington, NC. The committee is comprised of about 30 of the most prominent business people in Wilmington, and what we do on the committee is essentially lay the foundation and the planning for what this center will do. Included in this planning is to come up with a name for the center, besides CEEV (I personally hate coming up with names for things).

During our conversation on potential names, someone brought up an interesting thought on whether we should have “entrepreneurship” as part of the name for the center. As one might imagine, it got more than a skeptical response (a bit ironic, if you ask me, considering we’re all entrepreneurs on the committee and are supposed to be risk takers and adaptable). Never the less, while I think entrepreneurship is a necessary word for the development of this center, I think he had a great point beyond that.

I think entrepreneurship is kind of the “web 2.0″ term for the business world. It’s that word that everyone knows, but not everyone necessarily understands. It’s like saying “I build businesses”. That leaves a big question as to just what that exactly means or entails… which makes it the perfect “web 2.0″ equivalent.

Entrepreneurship means something to those that know about it, and nothing to those that don’t. For example, if you are only involved in one component of building a business, like say marketing or accounting, that’s probably all “building a business” means to you. That’s why I say sell yourself as business development, not entrepreneurship. At the very least, business development gives you a title to work from at cocktail parties.

With business development your job not only sounds as important as it is, but it explains itself. Remember, you’re probably addressing a group of individuals who, if they got their business degree, are used to intuitive phrases like “diminishing returns” or “cost benefit analysis”. Saying “entrepreneurship” is like throwing “amortization” out there and expecting people to not have to think.

More than just the title, however, business development says you play nice. It means you’re capable of developing alternative revenue streams for a company, and growing their business in new ways that ultimately derives more profit. And while I wouldn’t say this about all job titles, with the kind of person biz dev requires, usually if you can do it for someone else, you can do it for yourself. So you’ll have built in credibility if you do ever decide to cross over into the realm of “entrepreneur”.

So, I’ve decided that I am going to simplify the whole process and say an entrepreneur is someone who has started their own company, and the rest are just business developers. I’ve done both, but for now, I think I’ll wear the biz dev tag. It just clicks faster, which means I get to spend less time explaining what I do to people and more time explaining why they should care.

Note: I realize that the great irony of this is my actual title says neither. But you get about the same reaction with V.P. of Technology. Too broad.

Note 2:I changed the title from the original as, I’ll admit, my original title was not great.

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Are You Really What You Say You Are?

I got a call from a friend of mine the other day asking if I wanted to do lunch and talk about business and the industry. I’ve received a number of calls like these from friends of mine who are recent graduates, and in most cases, honestly, it’s an awkward call. It feels awkward because in most cases the call and the meeting feels forced, and it is. 

I find in a lot of cases, not just with my friends who are recent graduates, people go through what they perceive the motions of their job title is without any consideration of what their job title actually means. Or, stated differently, their job title defines them, versus them defining their job title.

The difference between the two is phenomenal as it can reach out to the potential of your success and go to the depths of really being who you say you are. Are you really a marketer, or are you just an individual that knows about marketing? Are you really a graphic designer, or are you someone who just has an eye of aesthetics? The difference entails being what a manager meant 10 years ago, or defining what it will mean 10 years from now.

So what are you doing differently than 99% of other people who claim the same title as you? How can you act that makes a difference?

(Short aside: For me, this is a thought that transcends the work place, too, cascading into life in general. Am I like every other boyfriend? Any other son? Any standard friend? To make a difference you’ve got to be different.)

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I’ve met my match.

I realize I am being a bit unfair to you all. I haven’t posted in what feels like ages, and when I do post, it’s simply to say:

I’ve met my match. But not in business, in relationships.

Not that you know her (though given the small world, it’s possible), but for the sake of sharing (and for referenceability), Stacy is her name. I’ll try to avoid being too sappy. But we’ll just say that she’s the first person I’ve ever been with who actually sucks my vocabulary dry when it comes to coming up with ways to express how incredible she is, and how happy I am.

Stacy is remarkable in that she’s passionate about my work, and actively supports me with it… which is important to me because I am tremendously passionate about my work. I bring this up because as she’s been supportive of my passion, she’s also helped me to realize important components that pertain to my job. 

One such realization is that the hardest thing for me to learn since I’ve been with National Speed hasn’t been how to manage my team or others, but how I manage myself. Communication with my team has never been an issue. Nor has getting done what needs to be done. They are all fantastic, passionate and motivated. What’s been more difficult, I am realizing, is including for myself the approprite time for much more of the forward-thinking mechanics of the job. These are mechanics I often am doing off work, or stay late to complete, but really may render best results if done within the work environment (maybe not always, but certainly mostly).

I think part of the issue stems from the business culture that is there, both environmentally (in terms of office orientation) and socially. But part of it, too, probably stems from a need to further delegate. I feel I delegate quite a bit already, but I am also afraid of becoming the team leader that people look to and say “Does he really do anything? He just delegates it all to us.” A point I neve want to be at.

Perhaps I’ll have to think on it further as I am not sure if this is simply a beam I will have to get used to walking as a team leader, or if I will eventually be able to find that happy medium.

(I do have a post or two waiting in the rafters. Just trying to iron them out)

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A lesson for selling products online by IKEA

OK. I like marketing. This is no surprise seeing as how I blog about it. But it makes me want to just punch someone in the teeth when a company that does a fantastic job in one component of their marketing drops the ball in another, related component - especially when that area is, you know, the whole making money portion.

In the furniture and real estate and clothing business (as well as others I am sure) staging is an important part of their marketing. That’s why we’ve got manikins and all those creepy things dressed like people. So we can see how awesome the clothes might look. OK, it’s also for those select individuals like myself who happen to not be so great at matching things but still want to look nice. I like to look at the manikin because I figure, hey, if it’s on the manikin and I like how it looks, it probably looks good to other people too and matches (for the record, this hasn’t always been the case). A lot of outlets do this well in the retail store but not so well online (which is unfortunate because it’s a lot cheaper to do this kind of “staging” online and realistically works well with the longtail theory).

IKEA is a place that does a fantastic job of really creating the “staged” environment online. They do really rich (interactive) imaging. I can a get feel for what the room or furniture might look like and through their wonderful, rich imaging of the staged rooms I’m viewing it helps me figure out what pieces I might want (I just moved into a new place). Basically, they do a great job selling me, but that’s where it breaks down.

IKEA can’t close the deal because in these staged environments that IKEA has spent so much to setup, for whatever reason, you can only actually go to view certain products through the interactive image. What this means is that when I am looking at their image and see a great bed frame I want to buy, I can’t click on the bed frame to buy, because they’re apparently just promoting a dresser (of the same brand) on this “stage”. Worse yet, I don’t even get a link that takes me to a list of all the products shown for that staged bedroom. You know, in the event I liked the sheets, too (for the record, the ones I want are not the same as the one in the image above).

Of course, a simple search for the brand MALM doesn’t actually return results of all products on their site that is the brand MALM. It only returns some. I have no idea why. Either the guy who did their backend database architecture got a little lazy so the search isn’t quite referencing all the right table elements or they haven’t used Google enough. User expectations are important, and Google set the standard. When I search for MALM. I expect all of MALM. I don’t enjoy the adventure of trying to find out where the heck this bed frame is on your site so I can buy it, Mr. IKEA.

If you’re going to invest the money in doing a fantastic job of marketing your products to me, make sure to make it easy for me to find all the products you’re trying to market to me because I just might want them all. Oh, and then actually let me buy them.

Update: Fixed typo in title. Sorry about that. It was late and the title was giving me grief as it was : )

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