The Wall Street Journal put out a story recently on how young entrepreneurs face greater challenges than their older counterparts when they are starting a new business.The article mentions that with the success of YouTube and other dot come ventures, young entrepreneurs are flocking to get their own companies started but they are strapped for cash and often don’t have the financial stamina to succeed. According to one young entrepreneur they interviewed, “the most difficult challenge is convincing people that you’re savvy enough to do something even at a young age.”
They offer five suggestions for how young entrepreneurs can successfully pitch investors, partners, and customers to get them to believe in your idea and give you the money you need to succeed.
1. Be persistent - “Persistence does work,” says Ms. Darrah, 28, co-founder of Treesje, a handbag and accessory company in Los Angeles. “We wanted to be in Bloomingdales since the very beginning, but got the brush off for the first two years of business. They finally got back with us last year, and now our bags are in Bloomingdales.”
2. Partner up - For young entrepreneurs with no track record of success, the right connection can mean the difference between being in business or not. Unfortunately, most young entrepreneurs lack these all-important relationships. It can help to find a partner that does.
3. Hire the connections - If a partner isn’t readily available, another option is to hire a professional that does. A business consultant, marketing expert or publicist can bring a Rolodex of contacts that a young entrepreneur might not have.
4. Stand out from the crowd - “I think the main problem was getting people to take me seriously since I was so young when I started,” says Tina Wells, who started Buzz Marketing Group, a youth-focused marketing-services company, at the age of 16. “Be willing to take risks in your work,” she says. “For instance, Buzz Marketing published a report that said that college students did not think downloading was illegal, and they were not going to stop. This got a lot of attention for us.”
5. Launch it anyway - “If you’re young and have a great idea for a company or product, you probably won’t get far in pitching an idea that is just on paper to a large company or investor,” says Carlos Barrionuevo, director of business development at NPR (National Public Radio). “Set a vision for what it could be, and do as much as you can on your own. Demonstrate some amount of success. Even if it’s in a small way, others can see where it’s going.”
What have you done to convince investors, partners, or customers to believe in you despite not having a track record behind you?
Evan Carmichael
Friday, August 31, 2007
WSJ:Young Entreprenuers Face Bigger Challenges
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Inc.Com: 26 Most Fascinating Entrpreneurs
Inc.com has a list of their 26 most fascinating entrepreneurs # 16 is Warren Brown, Cake Love and Love Cafe
because only in America will someone quit a secure job as a lawyer to start a bakery
Four years ago, Warren Brown walked away from a job as a federal litigator to bake cakes. It all started on New Year's 1999 when Brown, an able cook, resolved to become an expert baker as well. After work, he began to whip up cakes. He found that baking provided release from the workaday stress.
Soon Brown fell into the habit of throwing dessert parties -- "Friends were jumping on the bed," they were so happy, he recalls. Their joy combined with his job dissatisfaction led Brown to take a leave of absence in 2000. He wanted to see if he could support himself as a baker. He subleased a small commercial kitchen and found customers mostly by word of mouth. This went well enough that he moved into a 600-square-foot storefront that he christened Cake Love. He funded the business with credit cards and then a $125,000 loan backed by the Small Business Administration. When Brown officially left his day job, Emily McCarthy, Brown's friend since college, says she wasn't shocked but did think it was brave. continue reading at inc.com
Guess who was #1
- Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Omnimedia
because she took one for the team
Monday, August 27, 2007
Hustle Alert:Complex Mag Looking For Model
Complex is looking for a cute and sexy lady willing to get her hair cut for an upcoming issue. You must:
1. Be willing to get a REAL haircut (you will have some say in the matter, but don't come in expecting to get just a trim)
2. Live in the NYC area
3. Submit 2 medium-resolution pictures of yourself to jacke@complex.com no later than WEDNESDAY, 8/29/07
- one photo from the waist up showing your hair (no ponytails, headbands, etc.)
- one full-length photo showing your body
4. Be available to come in to the Complex office on Thursday, August 30 if you are going to be considered for the shoot.
5. Be available on Friday, August 31st between 9am-12pm for the shoot.
Friday, August 24, 2007
World Is Back
After a brief renovation at their Lower Eastside Headquarters the Crew at WORLD NYC is Back with a new look and feel. For my NYC peeps come out tomorrow for the official re-launch party and catch some sweet deals on Exclusive and Limiteds!!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Ari Gold:The Extreme Hustla
Via Young Global
Here's a collection of some of Ari Gold's "moments." Jeremy Piven is a fool in this role!!
"You can have it, if you want to live in Agoura f@#!ing Hills, and go to group therapy. But if you want a Beverly Hills Mansion, and you want a country club membership, and you want nine weeks a year in a tuscan villa, then I'm going to need to take a call when it comes in at noon on a mother f#@%ing Wednesday."-Ari Gold
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Quote of the Day:Kevin Costner
Cell Plane
There has been talk recently of airlines in parts of the world (JetBlue in America) allowing in-flight cell phone usage. cnet.com
For me I like the idea of disappearing over the clouds for a few hours. It's probably one of the few places I can just kick back and reflect knowing that I can't make any moves. That would be out of the window if they let calls through on the flight. I can only imagine noise that would be coming from the people sitting around yapping away. Arrrgggg!!!
What JetBlue is suggesting is allowing text messaging but not voice calls. Thats better for the peace and quiet but terrible for the disappearing act.
What do you think?But The Economist reports that 80% of airline travelers said that they would approve of the use of cell phones in transit. via infight.com
Friday, August 17, 2007
Forbes: Hip Hop's Cash Kings
Jigga tops Forbes List of Hip Hop earners last year See story here.
However the bigger picture is how many cats on this list came up under Dr. Dre. The Good Doctor has 5 cats, not including himself, on the list(highlighted in red). They list Pharrell as being Hip Hop's Quincy Jones(Maybe in his global personality) but in terms of the wealth of opportunity he's provided that title has to go to Dre. Not to leave out the second story of the list...ATL has 6 cats on the list(Highlighted in money green)..Young Joc!!! Now that's Hustlenomics!!!No. 1: Jay-Z $34 million
No. 2: 50 Cent $32 million
No. 3: Diddy $28 million
No. 4: Timbaland $21 million
No. 5 :Dr. Dre $20 million
No. 6: Eminem $18 million
No. 7: Snoop Dogg $17 million
No. 8: Kanye West $17 millionNo. 9: Pharrell Williams $17 million
No. 10: Scott Storch $17 million
No. 11: Ludacris (a.k.a. Christopher Bridges) $16 million
No. 12: T.I. $16 million
No. 13: Outkast $14 million
No. 14: Lil Jon $14 million
No. 15 : Ice Cube $13 million
No. 16: Jermaine Dupri $12 million
No. 17: Swizz Beatz $12 million
No. 18 : Chamillionaire $11 million
No. 19 : The Game $11 million No. 20: Yung Joc $10 million
Vibe Juice List: TJ Chapman
This time they got right!! The Vibe Juice List dubbed the New Power Generation was(In my opinion) the most balanced between the known and the unknown, across the many fields of endeavor. However the highlight was seeing that they FINALLY put TJ Chapman on the list...They say he has "Golden Ears" for discovering talent, but what really makes him TJ is his ability to put people together. He knows who can do what and knows how to call them at their mamma's house. As he did when he introduced me to David Banner before he got signed. Crongrats TJ, not just because he was on the list, but because he's got the Juice for real and now everybody knows it!
Read the entire interview here at vibe.com
TJ Chapman: The Golden Ear
By: Jon Caramanica
POSTED: 13:39 EST, August 14, 2007For over a decade, TJ Chapman has been breaking Southern rap records - far longer than it's been cool to do so. With his TJ's DJs record pool - and crucially, its website tjsdjs.com, which brings the latest regional hits to a global audience - he's come a long way from his days as a personal manager for Miami bass maestro Beatmaster Clay D. But the father of three still isn't getting much sleep - he co-manages up-and-coming Atlanta rapper B.O.B., who is signed to Atlantic, and he still listens to any song e-mailed his way. "It's a job in and of itself," he says with a heavy sigh. "But you never know what you might find."
PERSONAL MOTTO:
"It's all about the relationships."
Real Talk: Steve Jobs
Mandatory Hustle viewing.... Here's the famous Stanford Graduation Speech. Its really a simple speech but very powerful... Play this at late night after a hard day of grinding, or early in the morning before the sun comes up. Basically, anytime when the world is quiet and you can focus just on yourself and your place in the game.
It goes to show you that none this is impossible, just take your life and make your life.
"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Intimate Connections Pt.2: Dinner With Bevy & T.I.
TV One's coverage of "Dinner with Bevy" in ATL with the "King of the South."
As we covered in Intimate Connections, Bevy Smith has successfully fused the worlds of music and luxury fashion into a powerful social experience, where the meals are expensive but the "connects" are exponentially more valuable. Dinner With Bevy in ATL was a entire weekend of NYC Fashionistas from major brands kicking it with T.I & T.I.P. exchanging ideas and experiences.
The "Bevy Effect" was immediate: A few weeks after DWB, Louis Vuitton hosted T.I.'s album release event.
more photos at Sandrarose.com
Friday, August 10, 2007
Quote of the Day:
I reead a quote I had written down in my notebook and it speaks about our
deepest fear - the fear of our power beyond measure. Thought I'd share..
-Bobby Jones, VP Alloy Access
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be this brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. Its not just in some of us; its in everyone.
As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson
Mo Money!
We talked about money yesterday,and we are going to run it back again today. This ad campaign is from Carlsberg Beer...
£5000 in £10 and £20 notes were individually dropped around the streets of London with a removable sticker that read, Carlsberg don’t do litter. But if they did it would probably be the best litter in the world’.
Now that's how you make it rain on ya Competition.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Carlton Getting his Bank!
Here's an oldie but Funny. See a young Alfonso Ribeiro b/k/a Carlton Banks from Fresh Prince of Bel Air a/k/a The Tap Dance Kid getting his side money together by peddling a break dancing intsructional book. It comes complete with a Cardboard Breakdancing mat and the "right" Music for you to break to..Hahaha.
Get Rich? Or, Die Trying!
How's this for standing behind your product. 3M stacked "Real" money behind their security glass for a bus stop display Ad in Vancuver, Canada. Of course people took their chances with golf clubs and baseball bats to no avail. Now that's what's up, when you not only say your product can do something, but you put it out there for the people to test it--That's bout it.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Just to Get By: Makeda Botswana Redfern
This piece was written by Oakland resident, and entrepreneur, Novella Carpenter, who seems to be new to hood economics. Its about a lady who has come up with a rather creative way of financing her "upstart." Makeda is using her skills to make it day-by-day, but is in a program to expand her enterprise into a legitimate food business. Check it out.In the morning, when I'm out watering the garden, Makeda flashes by. Her shoes are half-tied, and her long red dreadlocks flop along with her jogging pace. "Hold the bus, hold the bus," she demands. When this tactic actually works, I'm astonished. The bus idles and she climbs aboard.
"Morning, Novella," she calls over her shoulder, and then she's gone.
Makeda Botswana Redfern moved into the yellow warehouse that serves as an art gallery at the end of our block in Oakland about a year ago. As I gradually got to know her, I discovered that she has a special skill: hustling.
"People don't like B.S.," she said, seated at my kitchen table on a recent afternoon, "A hustle doesn't have to be structured over dominance, over cheating someone out of something. I look at my sammich hustle as a fair exchange, like bartering."
[Sammich?? Wonder why she decides to write it like this?]
Her sammich hustle goes like this: Makeda slow cooks pork until it is fork tender, with a special barbecue sauce. She puts all of the fixings together in a cooler, and keeps the pork warm in a rice cooker. Then Makeda hits bars in downtown Oakland. Customers watch her put together the sandwich -- "so they know it's fresh" -- and it comes with an order of brown rice salad with cabbage. For vegetarians, Makeda makes a spinach tofu tart.
"Everyone deserves to eat," she said, "That's my philosophy. I even have a sliding scale for homeless people, sometimes I give them a half for free."
I'm intimate with Makeda's business dealings because about once a week for the past few months, Makeda has been approaching me for what I like to think of as a micro-loan. Twenty dollars is all she wants. The first time she asked, I figured I would never see the money again. But she's my neighbor, and on this block we tend to help each other. So I handed her my last bill and made a note in my head to get some more money from the ATM. The next morning, Makeda handed me a rumpled $20 bill.
After the third time I loaned her money (always $20), she promptly returned it, but this time she included a little plastic bottle of barbecue sauce.
Read full Story
Monday, August 06, 2007
Carlos Slim Trumps Gates As World's Richest Man
"Many people want to leave a better world for their children," he told the crowd. "I'm trying to leave better children for my world." -Carlos Slim
(FORTUNE) By our calculations, the 67-year-old Slim has amassed a $59 billion fortune, based on the value of his public holdings at the end of July. This number puts him just ahead of perennial No. 1, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose net worth is estimated to be at least $58 billion. But Gates is selling off his single greatest source of wealth, Microsoft stock, to fund his foundation, while Slim's fortune is growing at a stunning clip. His net worth jumped $12 billion this year alone. His family's holdings represent more than 5% of Mexico's 2006 gross domestic product, and Slim-controlled companies make up one-third of the $422 billion Mexican Bolsa, or stock exchange.Portly and often puffing a cigar, Slim could pass for a latter-day Latin American J.P. Morgan. But with his dominant stakes in everything from phones to finance, his business profile more closely resembles that of John D. Rockefeller, who likewise thrived in a loosely regulated environment. (For the record, though, even in current dollars Rockefeller's wealth pales in comparison to Slim's: At his death in 1937, Rockefeller was worth $20.3 billion, representing one fifty-second of 1937 U.S. GDP.) The average Mexican encounters a Slim-owned business when she visits an ATM, drives a car, stops for coffee, and especially when she picks up the phone - Slim's Teléfonos de México controls 92% of the country's phone lines, and his América Móvil wireless service has a 70% market share. George W. Grayson, a professor of government at the College of William & Mary, coined the term "Slimlandia" to describe how entrenched the Slim family's companies are in the daily life of Mexicans.
Read the entire story at FORTUNE.COM
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Swagger Jackers
It seems as if the underground has lost another term to the mainstream. The hommie Bevy Smith passed this piece from the NY Daily News for hustle consumption
Swagger sells on 'Mad' Ave.
Americans have always had a thing for swagger.We don't necessarily like psychotic criminals or arrogant Third World dictators, but people with swagger fascinate us, a truth now reinforced every Thursday night at 10 on the hit AMC series "Mad Men."
Set in 1960, the show tracks players in the ad industry, where swagger is the heart of the game.
Rules? They laugh at rules, including the Golden Rule. Especially the Golden Rule.
In the swagger biz, the whole premise is that it doesn't matter what you do unto others, as long as you do it first.
"Mad Men" also reflects something else that's been brewing on TV for quite a while, however: a long-term shift in the professions to which we look for swagger.
Once upon a time, American swagger was largely defined by physical guys like cowboys, G-men, explorers and soldiers. Think John Wayne.
Sure, there's always been swagger in other fields of endeavor. While Wild Bill Hickok was galloping through the West, robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were accumulating insane levels of wealth simply because there was no one to stop them.
But in general, swagger once had a blue-collar aura, reflected in the Westerns that dominated early television...
Instead of John Wayne, we have Wall Street traders, real estate moguls, lawyers, tech geeks, TV celebs and hustlers like "Mad Men" or Aaron Eckhart in "Thank You for Smoking."
They beat you by making more money, or playing the game better, or stacking the deck.
Series like "Mad Men" and HBO's "Entourage" catch on because we know or recognize people with the swagger on which those shows build characters.
Heck, we see that swagger in Dick Cheney, which is not to suggest he's the first or only political figure who found it easier to make his own rules.
Maybe all this is just one more reflection of America's gradual evolution from a blue-collar economy to a white-collar economy.
Whatever the reason, it seems like it's getting easier on TV, as in real life, to swagger without having to get your fingernails dirty.
