When I attended York University, I joined AMA@York. It’s a student chapter affiliated with American Marketing Association. We hosted many events and invited industry leaders to discuss career paths, marketing and entreprenuership. That was one of the best things about the organization because you had the opportunity to hear first hand from people who’ve done it before and been through it all.
One of the speakers we had was Stefan Danis, he is a CEO of Mandrake. One of things from his presentation that resonated with me until this day is the idea of ‘Board of Advisors’ aka ‘Circle of Trust’ or a ‘Mastermind Group’. I can’t find my notes or any material from that session (it was back in 2004 or 2005) for me to reference directly, but from what I remember is that your ’Board of Advisors’ is exactly what it sounds like. It is a circle of friends, colleagues, and mentors; basically, anyone who you trust to give you valuable insight and opinion on almost anything and everything related to you. Your ‘Board of Advisors’ advises you on your career paths, entrepreneurial ventures, decisions, sometimes even relationships, and all of the time the board is there to serve as a dose of reality check. You may even have the ’Board of Advisors’ and not be aware of it. These are the people you can easily go to for any type of advice.
Some people make an effort to meet with the whole board at least once a month, whereas I tend to seek advice ad hoc. My board of advisors consists of people who are either my age or much older, experienced I should say; and come from different backgrounds and industries. For example, if I need advice that is related to money, investing or economy I can always turn to my brother (even though he is younger than me, but he excels in that area) and my friend Alan. Entrepreneurship and marketing, I can always count on advice from Andrew Kinnear, and Olga Coman. For career related decisions I go to one of my former managers. For real estate, mortgages and financing I turn to Peter Moghtader and Danielle Del Castilho. And there are a handful of other close friends (you know who you are because you always get a call or an email from me every time I get a idea), and mentors who advise me on subjects above and more.
Now that I think about it, I have quiet a few people on my board. A friend in automotive business, a friend in a fitness industry, and a friend who quit his day time job and became a restaurateur… and the list goes on.
photo by: gribley
The inspiration for this post came when I saw a lady distributing Yellow Pages books from her van. Made me think about the last time I used Yellow Pages; the actual printed book. It occurred to me that the last time I used it was before I had high-speed internet. I got my high-speed internet in early 2000. For the past ten years I’ve been getting my information from online sources. If I want to find a phone number, I go online. If I want a restaurant recommendation, I go online. If I want to know the closest car wash to me, I go online. And most of my blog readers, friends, and colleagues do the same. But surprisingly, majority of small businesses are not online. They only exist in the offline world.
I completely understand that not all small businesses need a full website, need to be on every social network, or provide status updates regularly. I understand that economics may not work, expertise may not be there, and time commitment to figure out how internet works may be non-existent. But please have some kind of presence so that I could find you, call you, and recommend you. There are enough tools and sites such as Yelp and Google’s Local Business Center and that allow you to claim your small business listing, update your information, and interact with your customers with ease. But most importantly, it leads to greater understanding the type of impact having even a greater online presence may have on your small business and your bottom line.
While reading a Business textbook, I was extremely surprised to see that the author listed luck as one of the reasons why small businesses succeed. It is almost unbelievable that a business textbook would imply that you can succeed in business with some kind of magical force. A quick search for the definition of luck from various dictionaries brings me to conclude that luck is “some kind of force beyond our own control that shapes events and circumstances that create amazing or unfavorable outcomes.” However, I agree with the author on other three things he lists as reasons why businesses succeed, these are (1) hard work, (2) market demand and (3) managerial competence; but luck should not be mentioned in the textbook. I can think of at least a dozen of other and better reasons why businesses succeed.
A former boss of mine once said, luck is the point where preparation meets the opportunity; and I firmly believe in that. The reason why businesses succeed is because they have done enough work and preparation to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. Referring back to the textbook, the author uses a horrible example to describe what luck really is. “Entrepreneur started an environmental clean-up firm, he struggled to keep his business afloat. Then the government committed a large sum of money for toxic waste clean-up. He was able to get several large contracts, and his business is thriving.” Luck by traditional definition had nothing to do with this entrepreneur’s large contracts from the government. He was simply prepared to take advantage of the opportunity. He had a firm, he worked hard, he was determined, he had enough cash to last as long as possible. The entrepreneur wasn’t lucky, he was ready.
The bottom line is, there are opportunities everywhere. It is just a matter of whether we are prepared and ready to take advantage of them.
