All Articles Tagged "entrepreneurship"
The Good and The Bad of Becoming My Own Boss…
It’s not the sort of reaction you expect when you tell your friend you’ve been laid off, but I guess it made a lot of sense: “Congratulations! This is the best thing that could have happened to you.
“You’ve been dying to leave that company for years. Mazel tov!”
She was right. Yes, I was unhappy at work for what seemed like forever. Although no one else had said it so bluntly, the general consensus among family and friends was that getting laid off from my job was a good thing. Now I could go into business for myself and become a full-time freelance writer.
All my life I had been told to study hard and get an education so I could get a good job. Now even my mother was encouraging me to become my own boss – writing and selling features to newspapers and magazines around the world, effectively becoming my own news agency.
But that was easier said than done. Working out taxes and payroll, getting acquainted with LLCs, S-Corps and Quick Books has made my head hurt. In the month since I launched my company – Marissa Charles Media – I have mostly learned my lessons the hard way. Here is a list of things the Universe has brought to my attention:
I can’t do it all
Yep. That’s right. I am merely a writer. I say that with genuine humility. I was put on this earth to tell the stories of others and I’m blessed that I have been able to earn a living doing that for more than 12 years.
What I am NOT is an accountant, web designer, lawyer and IT expert. But when I started this business I tried to take on most of those roles with gusto.
Part of being your own boss is realizing your limitations. If you don’t know something, find someone who does.
Looking back, I cannot believe I even thought I could design my own website. Seriously? In the end, finding someone who could tinker away on it while I did other things, was the best decision I ever made and the result speaks for itself.
Entrepreneurs You Should Know: Jewelry Designer Yumnah Najah
Yumnah Najah Qadar wearing one of her creations.
When most of us were seventeen, we were preoccupied with flirting with boys, going to our first little college parties and enjoying our first tastes of freedom. But that wasn’t the story for Yumnah Qadar.
While many of her peers were off enjoying the last bit of their teenaged years, Yumah was creating a business and a brand.
As a child Yumnah enjoyed painting but she hadn’t painted since her days as an elementary school student. It wasn’t until she was a junior in high school that her art teacher, Ms. Foster, motivated her to start painting again.
Impressed with her work, Ms. Foster encouraged Yumnah to create a portfolio and apply to the Pratt Institute’s design school. During this process Yumnah started looking for big and bold accessories. But she couldn’t find anything to match the vision in her head.
Inspired by nature and other famous painters, Yumnah began creating her own jewelry and eventually launched her own line, “Yumnah Najah.” That was just last year, when Yumnah was seventeen.
But “Yumnah Najah” is more than just a hobby for Yumnah. In addition to her coursework, Yumnah enrolled in jewelry making classes to ensure that she was using the best materials for her pieces.
Often times we hear about parents discouraging their children from pursuing creative occupations but Yumnah’s parents were nothing but supportive of her dream. As a business major, Yumnah’s parents were excited for her to apply what she was learning in school to a real life business.
“My dad worked as a carpenter his whole life but he’s always been passionate about entrepreneurship that would give back to community,” Yumah says.
Her father encouraged Yumah and her other six siblings to do something that would allow them to give back to their Harlem community.
It’s this community aspect of her business that has allowed her budding business to thrive. Yumnah has found some helpful resources within her own neighborhood.
“You don’t realize how many people, who are so close to you, have so many talents. A lot of the older women in my neighborhood and a lot of my dad’s friends who were accountants helped me. When you’re young, people are very supportive.”
Through the help of mentors, supportive parents and her own initiative “Yumnah Najah” has enjoyed significant success to be such a young brand.
Folake Huntoon wearing a pair of Yumnah's earrings.
Popular style blogger, Folake Huntoon, of Stylepantry.com profiled “Yumnah Najah” on her site. The earrings she wore on the site have become Yumnah’s most popular.
Aside from this major nod, “Yumnah Najah” will be featured in several boutiques this upcoming holiday season.
Yumnah’s success hasn’t come from mere luck. This young woman is out here hustling. Not only does she paint everything by hand, herself, she’s steady on the grind attempting to bring more exposure and awareness to her wearable art.
“We all deserve success. You really have to believe that and not let anybody let you think otherwise. That’s a crazy thought to think that you’re not worthy of success. It’s a matter of pushing yourself forward to actually get there.”
Now that she’s achieved this level of success, Yumnah is attempting to teach other young adults to pursue careers in entrepreneurship. She volunteers with an Urban Roots program that seeks to foster inner city students’ desires for entrepreneurship.
“Growing up in Harlem is such a unique experience. There’s this really deep cultural side. Then you have the violence and the lack of proper education. It’s been a major driving force in my desire to have my own business and hopefully employ other people.”
With a strong belief in her own abilities and a willingness to help her community we expect nothing but great things from this young entrepreneur. We look forward to seeing what Yumnah will be able to create and who she’ll be able to inspire in her future endeavors.
You can check out Yumnah’s collection below and on her website at YumnahNajah.com.
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Does Your Product Stand a Chance?
(Black Enterprise) — You’ve got an idea for a new product that you think is amazing. The thought of introducing it to the marketplace is so exhilarating that it keeps you up at night, and you can’t stop wondering, “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this yet?!” For some, these feelings of optimism and excitement around creating a new product are the seeds from which a flourishing business will grow. For others, they can result in less than desirable outcomes (e.g., a substantial loss of time, energy, and money). What leads to these disparate outcomes? Of course, there are a variety of factors. But one thing that every entrepreneur looking to develop a new product ought to consider first and foremost, is whether the product idea is truly viable. And by this, I mean: Will the product sell, and can you build a profitable business selling it?
Rethinking Your Business Model
(Inc.) — Changing a business model is a very big deal, and Reinaldo was smart to look for outside opinions before he committed to a course he could not easily reverse. Reinaldo told me that his company had 700 licensees using the software in question. The total market, he said, was 5,000 to 6,000 users. Reinaldo estimated that the company’s revenue from current customers would drop by about two-thirds if it adopted the free-download model.
Time to Hire an E-Lancer?
(Inc.) — With unemployment at 9 percent and 2012 looking bleak, many job seekers find themselves adrift in a modern version of the preindustrial piecework economy. E-lancers, freelancers, and assorted contract laborers are taking on discrete assignments that would once have been handled by full-time employees. Recognizing that financial crisis or no, people still need things done, entrepreneurs are brokering tasks for the un- and underemployed. Amazon was in this space early with Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourced market in which programmers bid out simple tasks that humans do better than computers, like identifying objects in pictures. Although the opportunities advertised on SkillSlate, which bills itself as a local-service auction site, are more substantial, most are not the stuff of which careers are made.
Not All Entrepreneurs' Goals Created Equally
(New York Times) — Small-business owners are often described in monolithic terms. But as I rediscovered during a conversation with three women who run companies, their goals and motivations tend to vary. When I met recently with Jessica Johnson, Susan Parker and Carissa Reiniger of ournewly formed business group, we talked about their long-term goals. (Alexandra Mayzler, the fourth member of the group, couldn’t make the meeting.) I was particularly curious about their thoughts and attitudes about eventually exiting the companies that they or their families — in the cases of Ms. Johnson and Ms. Parker — built. Ms. Johnson said that exiting Johnson Security Bureau would feel like walking out on a spouse: “My daily struggle is, how do I keep the business going successfully for as long as possible, while protecting myself and my interest?” She added that she did not want to turn 75 one day and find that she was still trying to find security guards to cover a client at 2 a.m.
Another Advantage of Grad School: Free Advice
(Wall Street Journal) — Carolyn Starks admits she didn’t know the first thing about marketing when she launched her own business last year. But she also couldn’t afford expert help. Previously laid off from a reporting job at a daily newspaper, Ms. Starks says a friend working at nearby Elmhurst College just outside Chicago offered to introduce her to faculty in the school’s marketing department, knowing it has a program that matches students with small businesses in need of support. The introduction paid off. For the next five months, Ms. Starks, 49, met once a week with two senior marketing majors to identify low-cost ways to promote her start-up, a publishing firm called Storybuilders Books. In between, the students would do research on Ms. Starks’s target audience — preadolescent girls — to come up with relevant ideas. A professor at the school oversaw the project.
Obama's 'Startup America' Takes Shape
(Wall Street Journal) — It’s been eight months since Startup America was announced, but a major part of the initiative has only recently taken off. The initiative is made up of a series of public-private programs designed to spur small-business growth. The two operations of Startup America have different missions to accomplish the same goal – boost entrepreneurship and job creation. On the private side, a number of initiatives have rolled out over several months including classroom and mentorship programs provided by nonprofits and corporations. But the principal agenda for entrepreneurs, called the Startup America Partnership, launched only this month. It is now allowing entrepreneurs to apply for free or discounted products and resources such as Google Adwords, Intuit payroll services and Salesforce technology. Collectively, there are more than 25 partners who have pledged $730 million worth of in-kind resources to help small firms grow.
Is The Cloud Right for Your Company?
(New York Times) — Most businesses, whether they realize it or not, already have at least a foot in the cloud. If they use Gmail, for example, they are going into the cloud to let Google’s computers handle e-mail. In fact, most of us have been tying into Internet-based services for more than a decade. But now, more and more business-oriented tools are becoming available online, including many that can be critical to running a company. This guide looks at questions business owners ask and trade-offs they have to make.
WILL IT WORK? Jeff Becker, president of Kotis Design, a custom apparel company based in Seattle, primarily used custom applications to handle tasks like inventory management, order production, invoicing, accounts receivable and customer resource management. They were all tightly integrated, and Mr. Becker said he believed that nothing in the cloud could match his applications for zipping orders through his 45-person company. But for an accounting and financial management system, he decided cloud-based services were more sophisticated and flexible than anything he was likely to build, and he selected offerings from Intacct. Even after spending four months integrating Intacct into his system, he expressed confidence that he had saved time and money: “We’re definitely in favor of moving to the cloud as we go forward.”
Life Beyond PowerPoint
(Entrepreneur) — PowerPoint, Microsoft’s presentation tool, was once ubiquitous as the business standard for organizing, distilling and demonstrating business ideas. Now, PowerPoint has far more competition. The Web has sparked a brisk market in alternatives for presenting your next big idea. And we spent about a month distilling the best among the new offerings in online presentation systems. Here are four worth knowing.
Google Docs Presentations: What it is: Google Docs, part Google Apps’ set of Web-based tools, contains a presentation-building tool which is both simple and powerful. Similar to Google’s document-sharing capability, users can create, edit and collaborate over the Web on what are usually basic slideshow presentations. Slides can be shared, published, embedded in a website or posted online for mass consumption. Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from your computer can also be uploaded into Google Docs Presentations.
