Q & A: Uncovering the hidden agenda
According to Kevin Allen, we pitch business ideas every day. But how do we ensure our pitches will be successful? Allen’s forthcoming book, The Hidden Agenda, teaches readers how to connect to their audience on an emotional level in order to win pitches. Entrepreneurial spoke with Allen about how to find and connect to what he calls the hidden agenda.
You write in your book that each of us makes a pitch every day. What do you mean by that?
Whether you’re trying to get a group of people to follow you for the first time who you’ve hired or you’re running a small company, at the end of the day there’s an organization you’re trying to reach and connect with. In business (that’s) an audience that you’re trying to get to do what you want them to do and to buy your product. So the notion of pitching, that is reaching someone and connecting with them so they will follow you is a universal thing in business we do each and every day.
What do you mean by the title of your book, Hidden Agenda?
Over the years of pitching, I realized that behind every decision is an emotional desire. People don’t buy with their heads, they buy with their hearts.
While everyone was listening for the functional stuff (in meetings), my antenna would go up and I would say I think this person is nervous or this person has an ambition. If I could connect with that in the form of what makes me special or what I believe or maybe establishing a shared ambition, I’ll connect with them and they’ll believe in my business. Once I started to codify this and use this as a process, we won much of the time.
First, it’s putting yourself in a relationship of empathy with your prospect to understand what keeps them up at night, what they aspire to, what they believe in. But that’s only half the job. The other half is reaching inside yourself, your core, to see what makes me special? Or what is it I believe or what ambition do I have? Often connecting to that hidden agenda is the magic.
2012: The year of the artist-entrepreneur
(This article by Michael Wolf originally appeared in GigaOm.)
(GigaOm) – While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.
A few examples from this year:
e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.
Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for $5 a pop.
Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.
I hope you become a pioneer entrepreneur in time of crisis as to day,to be able to create employment opportunities in your country at least.
Coaching program aims to empower female entrepreneurs
Dr. Mary Jo Gorman decided to help patients in intensive care units five years ago when she saw a problem brewing in hospitals.
“There’s a crisis in the intensive care units today based on the shortage of specialists taking care of patients in ICU combined with the aging population,” says the founder of Advanced ICU Care.
Gorman’s company uses telemedicine to allow communication between doctors, patients and their families. “Our physicians and staff are watching and interacting with patients 24 hours a day from our central office in St.Louis, Missouri,” says Gorman.
Her company is one of 10 recipients of Ernst & Young LLP’s 2011 Entrepreneurial Winning Women program. The winners from different industry sectors and geographies will be provided with advisors, resources and insight with the goal of becoming reaching their full potential. The program coaches its recipients in the following areas:
Setting higher goals
- Building a public profile
- Working on the business, rather than in it
- Establishing key advisory networks
- Evaluating financing for expansion
“Through our 25-year history of working with and supporting entrepreneurs, we’ve seen that the biggest challenges women business owners face is lack of access to capital and not having the same business networks as male entrepreneurs,” says Herb Engert, Americas Strategic Growth Markets Leader for Ernst & Young LLP. “We launched the Entrepreneurial Winning Women program to eliminate these barriers by providing women with know-how and access to valuable networks.”
11 business lessons Steve Jobs taught me
– Neil Patel is a serial entrepreneur that blogs about business at Quick Sprout and is the co-founder of KISSmetrics. The views expressed are his own. –
Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of the greatest visionaries ever. What he did for the technological as well as entrepreneurial world, will never be forgotten.
Although I’m young and haven’t been following Jobs’s career as intently as others, he has taught me a lot about business in the last five years. Here are 11 things I’ll never forget that Steve Jobs taught me:
People Matter, Not Features
Everything Jobs built made life easier for you. It was rare to ever hear him babbling about features he created, instead he focused on how these products made life easier for others.
For example, the iPhone enabled you to talk on your phone, watch movies, record movies, and listen to music. As simple as that may sound, without an iPhone you may have to had to carry around a cell phone, mp3 player, and a video recorder. Because of him your pockets are much lighter.
He taught me, along with many others, not to focus on just adding features or creating products. First and foremost, you need to focus on solving problems that people are experiencing. If you can do that, you’ll stay ahead of the curve.
Steve was always inspiring to thin different.
http://java-pallab.blogspot.com/2011/10/ remembering-steve-jobs.html
Manning up in Silicon Valley
– Connie Loizos is a contributor for PE Hub, a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. The views expressed are her own. –
This week, Marc Andreessen announced that Ning, the social networking platform company he co-founded in 2004 and that went on to raise nearly $120 million, had “agreed to merge” with the lifestyle blog network Glam Media. Yet few believe it will be a marriage of equals.
“Merger” was almost uniformly put in wink-wink quotations in press accounts of the deal. Outside investors didn’t buy it, either. “My guess is that Glam thinks it is gaining some credibility by adding Andreessen to its board, and in return Glam is putting Ning out of its misery,” said one VC who asked not to be named.
Andreessen seemed further undermined – if unintentionally so — by Ning’s CEO Jason Rosenthal, who published his own announcement at Ning’s site, writing that Ning had “signed an agreement to be acquired” by Glam.
If Andreessen gussied up the deal a bit, can anyone really hold it against him? Andreessen clearly wanted to be respectful of Rosenthal and Ning’s founding team. He had investors to consider, particularly Ning’s later-stage investors, who bought into Ning’s $750-plus million valuation just 26 months ago. (The company is reportedly selling for $150 million in Glam stock.) And certainly, Andreessen wouldn’t be first in putting a positive spin on a less-than-sunny situation.
Still, even slight exaggeration – which runs rampant in Silicon Valley – can erode trust between entrepreneurs and investors, between investors and their limited partners, and between the larger startup community and the press.
Just one example of how centers on asset sales, or transactions in which an acquirer purchases the assets of a company, limiting its exposure to unknown, future liabilities. There are numerous advantages to the sales, including lower legal fees and potentially higher payment prices, as acquirers don’t have to worry about maintaining a reserve to protect themselves. But in Quadrus’ clubby confines, asset sales are largely anathema, viewed like some kind of high tech “repo.” In fact, investors were once “very antagonistic” about them, said Bob Latta, a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati who works on venture capital financings and M&A.
Are patent reforms good for small businesses?
– Cynthia Hsu is a contributor to FindLaw’s Free Enterprise blog. FindLaw is a Thomson Reuters publication. –
President Obama recently signed into law the America Invents Act, a patent reform legislation that does away with the old “first to invent” rule. What does the patent reform mean for small businesses?
Most notably, the new legislation pushes Americans toward a “first to file” system, meaning that those who file for a patent first will get awarded the rights.
So is this change in the patent rules really a boon for entrepreneurs – or is it a bust?
The new law aims to simplify the patent registration process, and in turn aid entrepreneurs and encourage innovation. Patent filers are often met with legal obstacles. And, the “first to invent” rule was fuzzy enough to invite litigation.
Under the old rules, patents could be awarded to those who were “first to invent” the product. Meaning these first inventors could be awarded patent rights even if they never filed for a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. And, these first inventors could also take patent filers to court in an effort to gain rights, reports Entrepreneur.
Small businesses filing for patents in the past could get blindsided by a lawsuit that alleged someone else was actually the first inventor.
The answer to your question is here:
Why the “America Invents Act” is Bad for Startups and Bad for America by David Boundy (a patent attorney)
http://www.reformaia.org/news/why-americ a-invents-act-bad-startups-and-bad-ameri ca-david-boundy
For more info, see this: http://www.lauderpartners.com/PatentRefo rm
Vodafone opens Silicon Valley startup accelerator
– Mark Boslet is a contributor to PE Hub, a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. –
Everyone these days seems to be getting into the startup accelerator business. Why not an international mobile phone giant?
Why not, indeed. Vodafone is the latest institution to open a Silicon Valley accelerator with the aim of sparking innovation, and, according to a press release, providing “potential financial assistance.”
In an interview, Fay Arjomandi, a head of U.S. R&D, played down the equity side of the center. “We may choose to invest,” she said, referring to Vodafone’s venture capital arm.
The real target of the Vodafone Xone is to offer a fast track for new products to conduct user trials in as little as nine months. The idea is to “identify and qualify innovative technologies from startups, R&D labs, universities and venture capital portfolios,” according to the release.
Change is afoot, said Arjomandi. It used to take years to bring products to market. Now the cycle has shrunk to six to nine months.
The Redwood City center has room for 24 startups and will provide technical expertise and logistical support.
Sittercity founder to launch “social recommendation engine”
– Connie Loizos is a contributor for PE Hub, a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared here. –
Genevieve Thiers is not a household name in Silicon Valley, but many Chicagoans know her as the founder of Chicago-based Sittercity, a 10-year-old online subscription-service that marries families to caregivers around the country for help with their children, pets, and aging parents.
Thiers is also among a small, but growing number of second-time entrepreneurs beginning to emerge from Chicago’s young, but maturing tech scene. Next month, Thiers officially launches her newest startup, Contact Karma, with co-founder Maureen Wozniak (no relation to Apple co-founder Steve).
Her timing looks ideal. Sittercity appears to be on solid footing. It lists more than 2 million caregivers; its corporate customers include the Department of Defense, which uses the service to assist military families; and in April, it raised $22.6 million led by New World Ventures, bringing its total funding to date to $30 million. According to Thiers, Sittercity, along with the well-financed restaurant discovery and ordering service GrubHub, may not be far behind their local peer Groupon in filing for a public offering.
“There are a number of (Chicago-based) companies that could very well IPO if they wanted in future years,” she said.
Now, Thiers — who is expecting twins in November and passed along Sittercity’s CEO role to the company’s COO last year –- is hoping to create a second, long-standing Chicago company with Contact Karma, which Thiers and Wozniak characterize as a “social recommendation engine.”
For the last few months, the two have been creating a database of recommended service providers that businesses can find both by surfing Contact Karma’s platform, as well as through daily deals that Contact Karma sends out via email. Want a marketing pro for a particular project? You can visit Contact Karma and see who comes recommended and by whom. Meanwhile, you can probably land a cheap company lunch through an emailed coupon for group takeout.
7 business mistakes you ought to avoid
– Neil Patel is a serial entrepreneur who blogs about business at Quick Sprout and is the co-founder of KISSmetrics. This article originally appeared here. The views expressed are his own. –
After 10 years of being an entrepreneur, you probably think that I have everything figured out, right? Sadly, I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, to a large extent I know what I’m doing, but just like my first day as an entrepreneur I’m still making mistakes.
The mistakes aren’t the same rookie ones I’ve made before, but instead they are bigger mistakes. Here are some of the mistakes I’ve made over the last few years that you should avoid:
Business mistake No. 1: Don’t get too personal with your employees
I love helping my employees out. When they are happy, it makes me happy. But over time what you’ll realize is that the closer you get with your employees, the more likely they’ll push their problems onto you.
I don’t mind helping people out with their problems, but if they can’t learn to solve them by themselves, how will they ever grow as individuals? So instead of babying people 24/7 make sure you help them out a bit, but don’t be afraid to watch them fall. When they fall, they learn how to pick themselves back up, and hopefully prevent it from happening again.
Business mistake No. 2: Don’t be too generous
Great tips Neil, experience is absolutely the best teacher. I also like your aspect as an entrepreneur. Don’t be afraid to get wrong, all of us had been there when just starting. The most important is you need to learn from your mistakes and develop it to a better new you. Just like before when I’m starting to hire staff for my small business. I didn’t realize that I made I wrong decision, hiring staff from job sites like monster.com. Until I read some tips ( https://www.staff.com/blog/why-hiring-on ly-on-job-sites-could-be-a-mistake-for-y our-business/ )regarding mistakes when hiring staff. I found out that there are applicants who are good only on interviews but screw up on the actual work.
A look into Carbonite’s IPO
As an entrepreneur, David Friend has been around the block a few times. The 63-year-old has built and sold four companies and raised a ton of venture capital along the way. That still didn’t prepare him for the wild ride he experienced in taking his company public.
After the dust cleared, Friend was the CEO of his first publicly traded company, but one with a significantly reduced share value and market cap, as Carbonite (CARB) became the lone U.S. tech firm to IPO last week.
“Everybody was betting against us,” said Friend, whose Boston-based online backup company reduced its debut share price from $17 to $10 in order to get out, in one the worst trading periods in nearly three years. At the close of trading on Wednesday, Carbonite’s share price had jumped to more than $15. “We kind of proved everybody wrong, but it was definitely a high-wire act.”
The same week saw nine other companies shelve their IPO plans. So why did Carbonite plow ahead?
“Maybe the reward for taking a bit of punishment on the price is that we’re getting a lot of publicity,” said Friend, who co-founded Carbonite in 2005, after wasting $1,300 in a failed bid to retrieve his daughter’s term paper from a dead laptop. “We want to do a lot of strategic acquisitions over the next five years and it’s a lot easier if you have a public currency.”
Friend is no stranger to exits, having sold four of the five companies he co-founded (Sonexis, FaxNet, Computer Pictures and GEAC Computer Corp) over the last 30 years.
So why did he decide to go public with Carbonite, after selling his other companies?
I’m confused about the claim that they have been able to acquire customers at $55. That doesn’t seem to be supported by the financial data in their S1 filing.
The breakdown I found most illuminating was done at Wikibon, here: http://wikibon.org/wiki/v/The_Economics_ of_Carbonite,_or_lack_thereof#The_Cost_o f_a_Customer
This analysis (based on the S1 data) suggests an acquisition cost that is almost twice as high. Did Friend/Carbonite provide more detail on cost of acquisition?
Perhaps most importantly, do they intend to report this metric in their quarterly updates?
One of the other elements you probably need to consider is the difference between a conversation with one or two people and talking to an audience. It’s hard to judge what a large group is thinking because we tend to think blank faces are judging us. Blank faces in groups are normal.
So reaching a group can be hard unless we understand what is going on.
We, as speakers, still tend to look for approval because we are still using normal conversational skills in front of a group. But on the whole we don’t get approval signs when we speak. So you might be thinking that you know their hidden agenda (they think you are boring) when you are interpreting the wrong signals. They are just listening. We need to re-think the audience and need to re-think how we are in front of an audience. It’s a fundamental of public speaking that tends to get missed. It seems to catch a lot of people out and during my courses you see the a-ha moment when we explore this point. So to be in front and to have trust in yourself learn how to be ease with blank faces – then you can probably see their agendas better.
John Dawson, Bath UK