Vancouver Board of trade is proudly to invite Gregg Saretsky, the president and CEO of WestJet. Saretsky was pointed as CEO in April 2010 and he has led WestJet to a successfully strategic direction. By adapting to the current market, WestJet has remained its core mission statement. To engage with the strong workforce and culture, Saretsky has demonstrated his tactics that can deliver a remarkable guest experience for all customers. This presentation will inspire many business owners.
Staying true, it is fundamental
WestJet focuses on low-cost strategy and customer experience. The WestJet culture engages ownership culture as their work environment. All staff members are eligible to become a part of ownership of WestJet and they are considered as WestJetters. Based on statistic, there are roughly 1000 resumes per year. Moreover, WestJet believes their culture is a gift to all employees.
“Train them well, get out of the way”
Saretsky indicates there are 5 secrets to WestJet’s success:
Secret 1: We care to plan
WestJet believes culture and care are two primary elements for all employees. For culture, Saretsky believes it is important to ensure that their culture thrives and continue to provide WestJet with sense of community within the organization. It creates a sense of pride in association with WestJet. As for care, Saretsky believes execution in are of culture is significant. In addition, WestJet has over 250 programs and celebrate all kind of culture tradition holidays.
Secret 2: We care to share
All staff members are eligible to purchase “Employee Share Purchase Plan”. The Plan will give employees an opportunity to become the shareholder of WestJet. There are over 80% of employees in WestJet that are shareholders. After become the shareholders, they will work harder.
All WestJetters are qualified to the profit share program. The profit share program will give 10% profit dividends twice a year among all WestJetters. In average, all westJetters earn over 300 million in total.
“Treat them well, they will serve well”
Secret 3: We care to really listen
Saretsky emphasizes listen to employees and guest will evaluate the performance of WestJet. WestJet will use culture CNXN, Tech Talk, airport visit to receive feedback from WestJetters. They will use test ideas, such as uniforms, commercial, and snacks on plan, to create personal connection with the WestJetters. WestJet will provide guest surveys and advisory board to evaluate the performance. All feedback will incorporate into WestJet strategic decisions.
Secret 4: We care to design
WestJet designs all their experience and process to make sure all WestJetters can be proud and successful. Saretsky ensures all guests are truly getting the values in everything WestJet can do, which includes lower fare and culture adaption.
Secret 5: We care to celebrate
WestJet wants to create a friendly and motivated work environment. Saretsky encourages all WestJetters to celebrate all success. He understands celebration is a part of successful process. In addition, profit share is just a way to give back to all WestJetters. Recently, WestJet designs the Christmas Santa to appreciate their guests to a part of WestJet.
The start of WestJet
WestJet was founded in 1996. The first flight is in Vancouver International Airport. During that century, all airlines are high differentiated corporations. Many people could not afford the flight premium, so they shared the cost to book the whole plane. They found the market and WestJet is born.
“Mass transit takes flight”.
WestJet is now serves 11 markets in British Columbia and more than 59 daily departures. Vancouver is considered as the 3rd largest base for WestJet. Between 2010 and 2013, the enplanement guest has increased over 20%. WestJet encore has lowest fare and stimulate air travel demand in British Columbia.
WestJet operates over 660 flights weekly from Vancouver International Airport and it has over 1000 WestJetters in British Columbia. WestJet has a high growth profit and provides 400 million bonds in 4% rates.
British Columbia eliminates the fuel excise tax, which creates a potential market for airline. Saretsky announces WestJet will look closely to Abbotsford to create another alternative for Canadians to fly out of British Columbia.
What lies ahead – opportunities
WestJet will provide WestJet rewards for all guests. First bag fee will a part of the low fare and Saretsky will provide the options for guests to enjoy their flight with WestJet. Moreover, Saretsky announces WestJet Plus package with low fare for guests to experience premium seating.
Saretsky believes in customer values is the direction of WestJet and he promises WestJet will continue delivering the best services to customers.
As for security issue, he believes Canada and United States should have the same check security protocol. In the future, WestJet will also implement few more perks for frequent flyers. A better wheelchair accessible seating will be a part of their future strategy. Moreover, as for gender balance issue, Saretsky informs currently WestJet has only 10% female pilots. He will provide more capability opportunities for future WestJet pilots.
Name: The Entrepreneur’s Tool Box Series: Branding Strategies
Presenters: Isabelle Mercier Turcotte and Dinny Landsowne
The Entrepreneur’s tool box series is led by the moderator Jonathan Chow, the Producer of Spark Metric Productions. This seminar is honored to invite Isabelle Mercier Turcotte, the Co-owner of Leapzone Strategies, and Dinny Landsowne, the brand developer of Zensation Creative Management. Moreover, they are branding expert and they will share their branding experience in this presentation for business owners who are looking for the upper edge to expose in their market.
Turcotte starts her hair salon business in the age of 19. Inspired by her mother’s entrepreneurship, she surpasses all her goals in 2006. After selling all her businesses, she starts to understand her passion and desire from working with corporation.
“Most people think cosmetic; however it is a lot more than just the outside”
Landsowne starts her career passion while traveling to Asia. She realizes the market trend in Asia is far more advance. She starts her business in garment industry and fashion design. She understands the connection between business brand and solo brand are linked, so she starts to learn branding strategies. Landsowne believes branding must align with the personality. Moreover, she reinvests in her business and starts to develop her unique mentorship.
“How do you communicate so they can hear from you and what I can do for them?”
What is branding?
Both presenters believe branding is building the word or spread the word. Business owners need to understand what the value is for other people. Business owners need to know the reason behind their actions and realize how those actions make people feel. If business owners understand the reason behind their action, they will know most opportunities can be distraction.
By looking at what business owners do the best, they need to sell the “Why”, not the “What”.
Any business branding requires these principles:
Who are you
What you care about
What you do best
Business owners need to speak in their clients’ language in order to connect with them. Moreover, business owners need to be clear on who they want to work with.
“There is nothing small if you are number 1”
There are two types of people in the work field:
People who play to win
People who play not to lose
Business owners need to distinguish the clients and work for people who play to win.
Branding should not always be about money; in fact, it should be about values. By connecting with someone, communication will be there and the will lead to sell.
Business owners need to assist clients to get to their destination and people must align with the business values. In addition, it is important for clients to believe the business value.
“People do not care if business have mission, they only care if business is on the mission”
Business owners need to know the core business values and what they stand for. By aligning the business values, clients will be attracted.
Branding is not an event, it is a journey
Business owners need to look at these three questions:
What is working well?
What is not working well?
What is missing?
Many business owners take on too much less ideal projects. Those projects are not aligned with the business value and it will create chain effects. The chain effects will make business owners under achieve and under commit. Regrets and miserable lifestyle will start. Therefore, business owners should do preparation and own the value of outcome.
Once ideal clients come in, many will follow. Business owners should have a filter that can judge the situation and say “no” to ensure project are aligned with the core value.
“Go beyond, try new things; otherwise it will be the same”
Presenters suggest all project should not have any attachment involved, especially emotion. By providing the best of the ability is all it matters the most.
If business owners have concrete value in their businesses, there is no reason to compromise. If business owners require assistance, they should look for mentors for advice.
“Do not let others drive you. You should drive yourself and be clear with the value”
People will judge others with their values. Therefore, it is important to take advice from people who are a part of the process. Presenters believe anyone who can give others recommendation right away is bullshit; instead, analysis is essential.
If people come and ask to work with you, business owners should do the preliminary analysis. It is important to pick the right client with the correct delivery strategy.
Brand promise
Brand promise is made up of language, process, and result. If there is something bad, it is an opportunity to fix it. Business owners should always get feedback; in fact, owners should appreciate their feedback and they will respond.
Business owners should always ask people to support them and listen with their heart. This will help business owners to understand the language.
There are two ways people live in this world: consuming and creating. Presenters encourage business owners to do the same thing differently. This will shift from their lifestyle to creating mode, and it will get them think in different perspectives.
Many people are limited to things in certain way because of the previous experience. Business owners should always build their business beyond the limit.
No Tolerance list
Creating tolerance means destroying business. If it is tolerance now, it will stop business. If business owners bend the rule once, it will take a while to get back on track. It is important for all business owners to not cut corners for clients because the habit will continue to the end.
“Do not worry about screw up, just fix it and continue”
How can it be done without you there
Business owners should find ways to build their business in a systematic way. Business owners need to review their workflow and redesign for better productivity.
The way business owners can think about this concept like if they are building it for someone else. Business owners can ask for support because they do not need to work by themselves. Simple is the key and it is all about choice because if the stakes are high enough, they will find a way.
Many people fail to systematize because if they know it is working, they will stop improving.
Another meaning for branding is perception. Business owners need to understand the value behind their business and communicate the values with the clients.
“How you deal with things, that is what you stand for, and that is branding”
Presenters: Trevor Linden, Jim Benning, and Willie Desjardins
Vancouver Board of Trade invites the current Vancouver Canucks management team to speak about their change management. The management team includes Trevor Linden, the president of Vancouver Canucks of Hockey operations & alternate governor, Jim Benning, the 18th General Manager in Canucks, and Willie Desjardins, the 18th Head Coach in Vancouver Canucks. They will share their thoughts and strategies on the future plan of Vancouver Canucks organization. This presentation will help business owners to understand the impact of change management.
Vancouver Canucks is honored and has the privilege to bring back Trevor Linden to the management. Linden has over 18 years of deep connection with the team. Due to last disappointing season, Linden is approaching to find the way to win.
Jim Benning is originally from Boston Bruins. He sees the potential of Vancouver Canucks and decides to change the environment. He decides to restructure the current environment to a winning environment. He seeks to bring other players to support the existing core players.
Initial Changes
The management team sees Vancouver Canucks team has people with good character. They will bring young players up with good habits. The existing core players will show impact and inspire young players. The team will remain competitive and restock new players. The current team will support what they have and win with the team.
Willie Desjardins believes the team. He believes the breakdown of Vancouver Canucks team is because of losing. He has confident the team will flourish success in future.
No trade clause contact
Jim thinks the no trade clause contract is a negotiation tool from the players. It will reduce salary cap, but players have full control. They can decide where they want to go. Trevor believes players are attached with the city and believe the effect of no trade clause is meaningless in Vancouver Canucks.
Change in play styles of players
The team will focus on attacking. Willie emphasizes the team has the philosophy of “Think fast, play fast”. He believes each players need to have “Quick decision right place” concept while they are in game.
Players flow under the radar?
There are many hidden players in the league. The main attribute the management team seeks is the player who can buy time with the puck. This will create opportunity for the team to execute the play and create the attention for the fans.
Trevor believes Willie is the guy who has the ability to connect with the players. He can get players to buy what he is selling. Last year, the team lost hope and lost the element of fun in the season. Trevor believes Willie will bring back the fun.
Looking for coach
Jim and Trevor believe the coach needs to have these characteristic traits:
Respect players
Treat player well
Hard working
Discipline
Willie has all the traits, and in Willies’ view of the organization, he believes Vancouver is an opportunity to become amazing.
Chance in NHL players
The management recommends all new NHL players to clearly understand what they want and where they are heading. Every player will go through good and bad times. If they have commitment, their chances will come.
Players’ view of the new coach
Players need to trust coach. Based on the previous coach that took Vancouver Canucks to the Stanly Cup playoff, respect is important. Players can figure things out and see through coach. Players are determined to prove to the fans and to themselves. Moreover, players want to show to coach, fans and themselves that they can get the job done.
Change the team behind the team
Aside from the hockey team, the management team puts effort to change fans’ experience. While off the ice, the hospitality is important for fans. The management team brings new chef and creates whole new feelings in Roger Arena. The management team believes in order to fully control the fan experience, they decide not to outsource any catering to external companies
Integrating younger talent
The management team will bring players who can play immediately. They believe players with talents should not hide and they should have the opportunity to demonstrate in the team. In addition, the management team will not bring any players who are not ready.
Change management in future Vancouver and making strategic decisions
The management team will do pro and pre scouting. They will only draft players who can win. Their goal is to move up the draft.
The management team will hire company to do their own statistics. The stats will be analyzed pre and post games. The management will implement new analysis to help players perform well.
Future Ticket Sales
The management team believes the negativity is gone. Trevor believes Willie and Jim will help out and provide positive atmosphere on the team. Fans are excited and the players will have fun again.
Vancouver Canucks organization will still focus and help out on community. The impact from players to the community is huge. Vancouver Canucks will continue to support children in British Columba as their number 1 priority outside of the arena. The organization forms “Canucks for Kids Fund” to support kids who are in needs in BC. Vancouver Canucks is sending a clear message to the community that their fans are their support.
Name: Internet Masterminds – Our Road to a $100K + Kickstarter Campaign
Presenter: John Winebrenner
Internet Masterminds is a networking group that helps business owners to connect with other business owners. The purpose of this presentation is to share business owners that growing profile and showing the world that good design can be found in Vancouver. John Winebrenner, the founder of Hurdler Studios, will share his success experience in his product of “Clug” by using Kickstarter campaign to achieve his $100K financial goal.
Clug is the world smallest bike rack. The designer of this invention is John Winebrenner. In his Kickstarter video, he uses the time-lapse technique to capture the detail of day to day in minutes and market the work in progress in his video production.
Design in Vancouver BC
Based on research, Vancouver is considered the number 9 in top 20 startup ecosystem. The list is measured by startup output, funding, performance, entrepreneurial mindset, trendsetting, support, talent and differentiation. Currently, there is no design firm in Vancouver. Therefore, Winebrenner believes in order to raise awareness in Vancouver, he needs to put design first in Kickstarter.
Designing the Campaign and the importance of video
Winebrenner uses his video on Kickstarter to show the process of phases. He captures the audience with free stuff. He also integrates 3D printing in Kickstarter to provide prototypes to engage audience. Lastly he provides email and website information for audience to reach him. Winebrenner emphasizes his video is only under 2 minute max. He captures audience attention in the first 15 second with his primary message. Moreover, Winebrenner suggests videos should present personality.
The Truth Kickstarter Myths & Realities
Winebrenner emphasizes that Kickstarter campaign is not used for raising money for equity. The campaign should be reward based. Owners should treat Kickstarter as a marketing tool. Kickstarter acts as a market engine, and it can compete with others. It is important for owners to understand that Kickstarter focuses on the startup phase only.
Rewards for audience using Kickstarter
Winebrenner suggests all owners to think over the reward process carefully before launch in Kickstarter. It is important to lay out the procedure and outline what will potentially happen when reward strategy is executed. Winebrenner learns that reward system can create massive work which can derive the primary objective in the project.
Key to Success
In Kickstarter, audience can sense the personality of the business in the video. It is important to show fun and passion in the video. Winebrenner suggests for owners to figure out the story behind the project. Public Relation is relatively important. It creates personal connection. Good public relation will drive the product to their target audience. Winebrenner wants all owners to know every creative campaign starts ugly. It needs to go through many phases of failure and redesign.
“The fail ones stop at the first stage of success. It is important to design into your story”
How Kickstarter works?
Kickstarter is to present a business idea on the website. Business owners will load up the video, describe the idea, and ask any potential investors to donate. Kickstarter is a platform to give people the money to convert idea to reality. The concept behind Kickstarter is gift concept, not sales.
Kickstarter will not market the community for business owners and it will not push ideas for business owners to community. Kickstarter builds up with the importance of “trust” element. Owners will set up an initial goal before release the campaign. If owners cannot reach the goal, all funding will go back to funders.
Kickstarter has a huge value of creating customer base. It can be used to market the new product line. The exposure of client information will only show until the campaign is successfully complete.
Winebrenner suggests all business owners to have fun and enjoy the Kickstarter campaign. As long as the message is align with the message in owners’ story, audience will support it.
Name: Social Media? Using small wins to grow social media revenue
Presenter: Shoni Field
This presentation is formed by Net2Vancouver and sponsored by TechSoup and Hive Vancouver. The primary objective of Net2Vancouver presentation is to share business knowledge in the non-profit organization perspective. The presenter is Shoni Field, the Director of Fundraising Innovation of BC SPCA. She implements many innovative strategies to help SPCA to increase revenue and donor base. This presentation will help organizations who are looking for online strategy to expand their revenue using social media.
Based on the current market trend, the online passive revenue is climbing dramatically from using social media; however, the spontaneous second gift rate is extremely low. The online active solicitations are under-performed, which shows there is no solid mechanism created for new donors and second gift rate contribution.
The symptom of social media is low engagement. Based on statistic, only 4.5% from 35,000 likes on Facebook have continued engagement. The success driving revenue through event registration is less than 3% of donors.
Shoni Field decides to shift the traditional model to innovative campaign model to improve the engagement of using social media. The campaign model includes the micro-site with goal thermometer, leader board, peer to peer capacity and social sharing. Field also implements new strategies to e-blast with their support lists and peer to peer fundraisers. Field redesigns the usage of media vehicles to capture new donors.
The campaign model has improved the online revenue. Field re-targets the model to make peer to peer as priority and create “home” page with goals, and it shows there is increased of visitors and new donors.
Field understands in average of 22% of gifts come from Facebook are guilt gifts. Roughly 66% of donations are from outside of the community. Organizations need to capture these donors information to improve their personal connection. In addition, Field uses contests and matching donation strategies to engage these potential donors.
Field emphasizes the key to increasing online revenue is to have “Home” for the campaign with goals. This will improve the personal connection to stimulate Facebook donors. The geographic is not the main factor in campaign, but organizations need to provide a reason for donors to prevent them converting to other giving platforms.
Most donors are giving their donation based on stories they are inspired. Donors are discomfort with making gifts to general. Field uses the tactic to release local stories to capture their emotion. Each story will have its own campaign page. When positive stories release, it raises social value and promote platform to fundraise for larger stories. Overall, Field has successfully increased the success rate of second gift and donor base.
Field suggests social media strategy must have quick gratification and clear impact. Organizations need to engage with donors when goals are met. The strategy needs to be about personal connection than transactional relationship with organization. In addition, organizations need to provide more comfortable sharing to their existing donors.
Name: StudioThink – How to maximize your business before you sell
Presenter: Bob Lawrence, CEPA, CPA
StudioThink is founded with a primary philosophy to help communicate ideas through branding. The organization forms “Think60” event to give and explore opportunities for business owners to share ideas with each other. The presenter for this event is Bob Lawrence, the president of Breakaway Business Transition Planning. Over 20 years of experiences as a CFO, COO and CEO, he specializes in identifying value drives of any business and maximizes values prior to exiting. This presentation will benefit any business owners who are looking for proper ways to exit the market.
When business owners are looking for exit planning strategy, they need to follow the 7 steps of primary procedures.
Goals and Objectives Analysis
Estimation of Business Value
Preparation of Personal Financial Plan
Value Enhancement Process
Analysis of Exit Options
Estimate of Net Proceeds
Business and Personal Action Plan
The first step will help business owners to understand the result that will impact their families and business. The second and third steps will analyze the outcome of the exiting the business. The forth to sixth steps will help business owners to forecast the path of exiting the business. Moreover, the last step will help business owners to create the action plan.
Many people are fear of doing exit planning because of emotion and financial issues. Based on statistic, 67% of people are not familiar with all exit options. In average, 49% of people have no plans at all.
In developing exit plan, business owners need to ensure they are clear about their post-exit goals and objectives. They need to understand their business current values and actions to increase value prior to exiting. The proceeds need to link with their personal financial objectives. Business owners need to understand the impact of business exit options and prepare for any unforeseen circumstances.
To complete any business exit plan, business owners need to follow these 8 steps.
1. Collect data to provide understanding of business and industry
2. Define and align goals
3. Prepare estimate of business value
4. Prepare / obtain personal financial plan
5. Value enhancement process
6. Identify and evaluate exit options
7. Calculate net proceeds and evaluate alternative structure
8. Identify personal and business action plans
The post –exit goals and objectives are important. Business owners need to understand the outcome of exiting the business will have enough financial support to cover their family objectives. The goals and objectives need to provide direction for any exit plan.
Business owners need to understand the value of business and know what it takes to increase it. The main impediment to successful sale of any business is the expectation gap between the business owners and purchasers. For example, many owners expect to have their sweat equity include in business value; however, purchasers only matter the cash flow that business will generate for future.
Business owners can use this equation to estimate their business value.
EBITDA x Multiplier (usually 2-5) = Business Value
EBITDA stands for Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
To increase the business value, business owners need to either increase EBITDA or multipliers. The impact from those factors can reduce risk that the business will not continue to generate the present earnings and increase the opportunities that the business will generate increasing earnings. These risks and opportunities are considered as value drivers.
Business owners can reduce the risk drivers and improve opportunity drivers to maximize their business value.
There are 9 options to exit your business
Sell or give your business to a family member
Sell your business to one or more key employees
Sell your business to your employees (ESOP)
Sell your business to your other shareholders
Sell your business to an outside third party
Bring an outside investor and keep a minority interest
Go public
Hire a management team to take over and become a passive owner
Liquid your business
Business owners need to understand that all exit options will impact after tax net proceeds.
Unforeseen Circumstances
Business owners to understand there are factors that can accelerate the exit planning. They are “Death”, “Disability”, “Divorce”, and “Distress”. Business owners need to ensure they incorporate contingency plan. The contingency plan will include the designated person who will run the business, the options of exit planning, the contact information, and other important items affect business relationship.
Business owners need to be emotionally ready to exit their business. Most business owners spend more time in their business than the combination of other activities in their lives. The business exit planning will reduce their uncertainty and make the transition much smoother.
Business owners should start their planning immediately. The planning will help business owners to foresee the values of their business. In future, there will be more buyers than sellers due to baby boomer wave.
In exit planning, business owners will implement goodwill. Purchasers will only consider business goodwill instead of personal goodwill. With good planning strategy, business owners can transform personal goodwill to business goodwill. These include building a brand, strengthening management team, and documenting procedures. Purchasers can come from competitors, customers, suppliers and other business industries. Business owners can use the business exit plan to identify their purchasers, understand the motivation behind the purchasers, develop conditions fit in to the purchasers, and manage implementation with the purchasers.
The Publish a Book boot camp is a three day program that consists of five main phases of “Plan it”, “Write it”, “Publish it”, “Fund it”, and “Move it”. The program focuses on how to use book to market business entrepreneurs’ recognition. Gerry Robert changes the traditional publisher techniques to adapt the upcoming trend of business. Nevertheless, Gerry will share his experience and procedures to help new business entrepreneurs to go above and beyond. Gerry has a different perspective and he has demonstrated his different perspective will lead to a different result. Gerry has inspired many business entrepreneurs with his amazing ideas and creativity, and this boot camp provides many effective strategies for all business entrepreneurs to become effective authors.
Gerry Robert recognizes the probability of success is low for business entrepreneurs if they partner up with traditional publishers. Moreover, traditional process of publishing a book will take up to 18 months. Business entrepreneurs should focus on outside of the book sale because money is not in the book, it is around the book.
In this generation, it is difficult to sell books. Business entrepreneurs need to understand it is how the book gives them the opportunity for other than the book sale.
Gerry Robert emphasizes business entrepreneurs should not follow the traditional process of publishing a book. There are two main statements Gerry Robert wants all business entrepreneurs to learn:
Do not sell in bookstores because it is not worth the effort and it is too slow
Hard copy will open doors instead of eBook
Business entrepreneurs reject good ideas when they are fear of leaving their comfort zone. The intensity will change and motive business entrepreneurs. Gerry Robert will provide the resources in the back to ensure entrepreneurs are focused with their work on the book.
“Action is the antidote of anxiety”
Many people believe they need to be fully prepared to publish a book. Gerry believes business entrepreneurs do not need to be an expert to write a book. Moreover, Gerry will show business entrepreneurs his techniques to publish a book effectively.
“What you argue for, you get to keep”
Plan It
Gerry wants all business entrepreneurs to figure out what they really want to write about in their books. Therefore, Gerry has created a system called “The Gerry Robert Book Planning System”.
The system makes up of three steps:
Primary Object (PO): What do you want your book to do for you
Target Population (T POP): Who is your ideal prospect
Needs, Desires, Problems (NDP): What keeps them up at night?
“A book is not written, it is engineered”
Gerry points out business entrepreneurs should write a book that is generic than specific. The book should do something for the author. The book should go wide in content than narrow.
Here are some examples of primary objectives for business entrepreneurs.
Leads 15 – 500
Give away a book as a tool
Create a lead generator
Become a speaker
$1,500 per talk
Increase clients
Increase extra payment
Increase Target population
20% to 80%
Open doors of opportunities
Speaks for CEOs
Publicity
Separate than everyone else
Job
Sell their product
Gerry Robert has generated some common examples in the market for business entrepreneurs to focus on their PO, T POP, and NDP.
Primary Object
Get on Radio to builds a database
Do TV interviews
Create more free time
Get on Radio to book appointments
Become an expert
Travel
Get on Radio
Get better clients
Become a speaker
Get radio to sell seminar
Sell products or services
Create awareness
Speak for a fee
Make money from book sales
Influence your industry
Build credibility
Tell your story
Get a position in an association
Meet People
Get a job
Get consulting contract
Open doors
Get a better job
Speak at conventions
Improve advertising results
Create MSI
Educate people
Impact others
Open a new niche markets
Meet famous people
be taken more seriously
Become more visible
Position yourself as an authority
Change live
Write newspaper columns
open new markets
Build my brand
Target Population
Age
Any trauma
What do they do for fun
Sex
Medical History
What makes them buy
% Male
live
How many of them are there
% Female
Net worth
Where do they
Occupation
Education
In the city
Level
% College
Rural
Children
% High school
How many friends do they have
% Married
Where do they like to eat
What organization do they belong to
% Divorced
Where do they shop
Do they take vacations
% Single
How much do they spend on
What makes them mad
% Students
What political party
Needs Desire and Problems
Stress related
Economic
Feels like failure
Self-esteem related
Family related
Wants to make a difference
Vocational
Future related
Is tired
Relational
Negativity of industry
Tired of conflicts
Financial
Wants more time
Lack of sex
Feels confined
Desire to succeed
Wants to stop struggling
Feels not being heard
Needs customers
Got bad advice
No time
Confused
Needs to stat over
Boss pressures
Unsure about change
Economic Uncertainty
Speed issues
Feels stuck
Distrustful
Fear
Tired of Rat Race
Angry
Hates Government
Skeptical
Gerry Robert suggests business entrepreneurs to stay away from children’s book, biography, and novels because these are difficult to monetize. The best ways to monetize is to write books that are “How to” and “Show them the money”. This is the fastest path to the biggest cash.
Business entrepreneurs should write about audience’s needs, desires, and problems. Therefore, they should understand audiences’ problem and what they are afraid of. Finally, business entrepreneurs will give the audience what they want and they will give business entrepreneurs what they request.
Plan the book not more than six months. Business entrepreneurs should never apologize or be ashamed to sell their books. They should be confident.
Gerry mentions copying someone’s idea is called plagiarize, but copying many people’s ideas is called research.
“The only thing they can grow is the thing you give energy to”
Write it
Gerry believes there are significant money opportunities outside of the book. This includes new clients, speaking, seminar, coaching and advertisement. The return on investment is phenomenal. Business entrepreneurs should look at this as financial asset. Writing a book is used to be daunting. People always have to think about it. However, anybody can write a book. As long as people can get it down first, they can edit it until it is right.
“People do not know the steps to their dream, so they kill their dream.”
“You can always edit a bad page, but you cannot edit a blank page.”
Gerry invents “The Write it System” that will help business entrepreneurs to set their blue print of the book. It forces to use both sides of the brain. The system will also help business entrepreneurs to write a book in 40 hours.
Step 1: Write 15 chapter title
Gerry wants everyone to write down 15 topics in any order. The reason for 15 is to help business entrepreneurs to exceed their limitation and get the best idea out of their mind.
Step 2: Your major topics in sequence
After 15 titles are done, Gerry wants everyone to cross out 5 topics and put the remaining ten into sequence. This will help business entrepreneurs to understand what is important and what is redundant.
Step 3: 18 chapter ingredients
Gerry wants everyone to brainstorm 18 ideas or ingredients that they can write about in one chapter. These 18 items will be the content of the chapter.
Step 4: 15 chapter ingredients in sequence
Gerry wants everyone to put eliminate 3 ingredients and put the remaining 15 ingredients in sequence.
Step 5: 15 significant statements
In this step, Gerry wants everyone to take each ingredient and ask themselves “What is significant about this ingredient?” Business entrepreneurs will need to make a very brief statement about each ingredient. Gerry wants everyone to put emotional energy into statement.
Step 6: Turn each significant statement into a question
By taking the statements from previous step, Gerry wants everyone to turn each significant statement into question. All questions should come from “Why?” or “How?” or “What is the best way to” or “How can I”. Moreover, questions that will elicit some answer are important.
Step 7: Come up with 3 answers for each question
For each question, Gerry wants everyone to write out 3 answers. They should try to make a very brief statement on each ingredient.
Repeat the steps for all topics. If business entrepreneurs write 5 minutes for each answer word, they need to write 15 minutes per ingredient. There are total of 15 ingredients, times by 10 chapters will equal to 40 hours.
Many business entrepreneurs will eventually run out of ideas. Gerry suggests to some ideas that will help them generate ideas.
File System
Speak, transcribe, write
From speeches and seminars
Teleseminar, transcribe
Blog posts
2 pages per day
Hire ghost
It is always a good idea to put free quiz. Audience loves free things and it will become a magnetic. Business entrepreneurs should optimize the white space as well.
“It always seems impossible until it is done”
Publish it
Book title is the main attraction to all audience. It needs to capture the readers’ imagination or curiosity or desire in that short moment. It is important to sell them what they want and give them what they need.
Any book needs a title and a sub title. The main title is generated by your left brain and the sub title is generated by your right brain.
Titles can be shock, controversy, borrow, well-known and bold. For shock, it needs a strong statement that shows an important fact. For controversy, it needs a strong statement that is opposite from the reality. For borrow, it can be similar to other titles in the market. For well-known, it needs to use the words people are familiar with. Lastly, for bold, the words must have a strong image that can trigger readers.
Cover is very important because people in the target population will judge on the book based on what the cover shows. In average, readers will spend the first 8 seconds to look at the front cover and 15 seconds to scan the back cover. The important thing is readers will only care about their NDP, so the cover needs to show them the book can solve their NDP.
There are some components to make an awesome cover.
Eye-catching picture
Need a picture to get attention
Pain point
Remind or highlight people about pain
Gain point
Create promise on the cover
Ultimate promise
Strong statement shows confident
Ask question
Question help people lean towards the book
Humor
Say something funny
Strong author picture
Impact on creditability
Reader-appropriate colors
Color shows different personality
Raise curiosity
Capture readers thinking
Do not be ambiguous
Simple and straightforward terminology
Use second sub title
Focus and narrow the main message
Consider using numbers
If you have numbers, readers expect more content
It is important to get endorsements. Business entrepreneurs should create a template letter to ask sponsors for testimonial. It is essential to figure out who are the important people in the target population.
In the binding phase, Gerry suggests the first time publishing books should be soft cover and 100 pages. As for copyright, the main rule is the content of the book can borrow up to 300 words without any permission; otherwise, it must have properly quotation or credit them on the back of the book. It is illegal to use image without permission.
Every book needs the International Standard Business Number (ISBN). The number can be registered free on the ISBN website.
The suggest price markup margin of the book should be around $2 to $4. Therefore, the soft cover should be around $34 and hard cover should be around $44.
Gerry recommends putting a QR code to attract audience for call to action. Moreover, Gerry also recommends do not put any blank pages. If there are blank pages, business entrepreneurs can utilize those pages for advertisement to a charity.
“It is not the book, it is the hook”
Fund it
Business entrepreneurs can provide the last chapter to a “resource author recommend” chapter. This will help the book generate some money for funding.
Gerry invents “The Fundit System” for all business entrepreneurs to start their funding. The foundation of the system comes from “Preparation”, “Attitude”, “Interviews”, and “Action”.
Preparation
Business entrepreneurs should find companies that advertise to target population. Gerry suggests not going for big company; instead, business entrepreneurs should go for small or medium companies that can write the cheque immediately. Big corporation have slow procedure due to legal checking. The important thing is business entrepreneurs need to get the money as quick as possible.
Attitude
Business entrepreneurs need to have a positive and confident attitude. They need to show them it is affordable and the book can market for them. However, most people will refuse, so keep trying.
“Some will, some won’t, so what? I will do it anyway”
Interview
Business entrepreneurs should find people who can create synergy with their book ideas. Gerry emphasizes all business entrepreneurs to quote everything in the interview. It is important for all business entrepreneurs not to mention their occupation; instead, they need emphasize they are business author. Gerry suggests the interview should be a maximum of 20 minutes. In any urgency matters, business entrepreneurs should blame their publishers if their interview is at risk.
Action
The funding process could take up time, so business entrepreneurs should book off the time in 24 hours. It is important to measure the results to ensure mistakes are recurring again in the future.
Gerry suggests 6 techniques in the system that will help to fund the book
Buy Now Cards
Keep the audience engaged and keep them warm
Sell Ads
Plant people in the book for exchange the presale
Feature profile
Goes within chapters to help them create recognition
“Bonus” Chapter
Increase the value of the book by sell more content to exist customers
Sell Speeches
Create opportunities to do seminar speeches
The order form close
Ask for the order and proceed goes to charity
“Complimentary, but not competing; informational, not commercial”
“Forgo your fee in exchange for them buying books”
“Blame your publisher for being pushy when asking them to buy”
Move it
The hardest part of publishing a book is to market the book. Gerry believes by giving out the ideas to the market, they will eventually see opportunities. When people make decisions, they will see attract more opportunities.
When people build or plant “thoughts” in their brains, there is a vibration from their brain to the things they desire. They will notice the surrounding that attracts their desire. Moreover, the process is very similar to business entrepreneurs and vision board.
“10% content, 90% market”
The easy part is to get the book published, yet the hard part is getting rid of the books. Based on statistic, 99% of people are still using 2004 or earlier market strategies. In this new generation, people will do their research, and they are less trusting and less royal. Therefore, it is important to understand the current target population’s mindset.
“If you do not know how people these days act, you will struggle financially.”
Business entrepreneurs can use book to break those barriers. In this generation, consumers are offended towards manipulation strategy, so their defense mechanisms are high. Instead, appeal their defense mechanism by respecting them.
The reticular activation system (RAS)
This reticular activation system acts as a filter in people’s brain. It will prevent new information going inside of their brain. In this generation, the RAS is increasing significantly.
In order to penetrate RAS, people must feel pain and gain while they are receiving new information. For example, business entrepreneurs can create introduction video to activate consumers’ pain, and then provide contact information to activate consumers’ gain. People are hungry to solve their problems and they are searching for their content.
Interview Campaign
Business entrepreneurs can use their book to get free publicity with media. Based on consumers’ psychological behaviors, they will come back if they receive something free. This is a strategy to plant seeds in consumers’ brains. Every time they come back, business entrepreneurs should increase their value. In addition, Gerry believes something away can change people’s behaviors.
During the interview, Gerry strongly suggests mentioning the book. The book will lead business entrepreneurs more media exposure.
“People are like moving parade. If they might not be ready to buy today, they might buy it later in the future.”
Speaking Campaign
The objective of speaking campaign is to sell to the group. Business entrepreneurs need to be good at speaking in public. The best way is to attend Toastmaster events, study other professional speakers, and mimic others. By changing tones and change different position while speaking will get consumers’ attention.
It is important to get feedback form audience. The best technique is to create demo videos and capture audience feedback to modify for future speaking content.
Book Launch Campaign
The objective of book launch is to celebrate and sell books at the same event. Gerry emphasizes book signing at the bookstore is a waste of time; unless people are famous like Donald Trump. Instead, business entrepreneurs can create a book launch event. They can invite sponsors, testimonials, and everyone that are involved in the book. Moreover, it is important to invite councilors to do short speech because they will spread words around to invite other councilors.
During the book launch event, business entrepreneurs can give away swag bags. In the swag bags, business entrepreneurs can put other people’s business contact to promote other people’s businesses. Before business entrepreneurs do the speech, it is important to invite charity first. They can pitch the book sale again by connecting publishers on Skype for more creditability. Nevertheless, Gerry suggests not doing any self-promotion.
Medias will reconnect with the society with the book launch and it will increase business entrepreneurs’ publicity.
There are other campaign strategies that will help business entrepreneurs. All campaigns are created by Gerry Robert.
“The fastest way to be successful is when everyone is going one direction; you go to the other direction”
Name: Leaders of Tomorrow – Accounting Speaker Series
Presenters: Paul Leedham, Brad Pennefather, and Andry Tanusdjaja
Leaders of Tomorrow (LOT) is one of the programs in Vancouver Board of Trade. The program helps and mentors undergrads about business entrepreneurship. Many students take this opportunity to develop business network along with other members of the program. The accounting speaker series is a seminar that provides business experience in different types of accounting designation.
Paul Leedham, CPA, CGA, CA of Manning Elliott
Paul Leedham starts his career as CA accountant in a mid-size firm that involves technology and fund at Abbotsford. He enjoys his career path because he encounters a mix of variety of public and private clients. Leedham decides to be involved as a mentor in Vancouver board of trade after his completion of CGA. He believes career and life must balance; therefore, he has passion in sport bike as part of his hobby.
“Not all business; must have play as well.”
Leedham always has the interest of giving back to the society. With his two designations, he is able to experience two different career paths in public and industry sectors. His believes accounting is an important skill to have since it can apply to every workforce. He suggests new entrepreneurs to concentrate more on practical than theory. Moreover, he encourages starting in small firm to start the fundamental.
Network is the key for Leedham in his success and it provides unlimited opportunities.
Leadership Lesson
Leedham emphasizes new entrepreneurs need to be ready and prepared when opportunities arrive. It is important for new entrepreneurs to act as advisors, instead of accountants, in front of clients. This will create more values for clients and about to bring value added resources to the table.
It is essential to have mindset of open to new things. In addition, Leedham suggests new entrepreneurs to obtain skills outside of accounting. Work experience will lead new accountants to be more seniority in business; therefore, professionalism is essential. New Entrepreneurs should always have the mindset of transfer knowledge back to community. Furthermore, New Entrepreneurs should always have confident; otherwise, they could not successfully persuade clients.
Benefits of being as a CPA
The global opportunities are endless with the CPA designation. New Entrepreneurs will experience different personality and responsibilities in the market. Moreover, these will also impact or influence skills in creativity and sales in the long run.
“It does not matter your letters behind your name; it matters what you bring to the table”
“Push yourself out of the comfort zone”
“Understand what can make you happy, do not just concentrate on numbers and amount”
Brad Pennefather, CPA, CMA Director of Sales of Vancouver Canucks Sports & Entertainment
Brad Pennefather begins his career at Coca Cola Company as a category manager. He realizes that 80 percent of sales are mostly from top customers; moreover, he learns the best way to communicate to individual is by using numbers.
Pennefather decides to move on to a company called Labatt to expand his ability in communication by involving with marketing and sales teams. He focuses on numbers because he understands everything company does will impact the bottom line of revenue. Because of his love for continuation of learning, he decides to complete CMA program. Furthermore, the program provides the knowledge for him to understand more about the end users.
Benefit in Life
CMA designation educates Pennefather that the art in data can turn into result. The number itself is interesting enough to influence others. His learning experience makes him understand that entrepreneurship is not just accounting, it is about sales, Human Resources, and implementation. Pennefather believes learning and be with similar people are important. Development and friendship are important, but the ability to continue learning is the key to success.
“See what you have done, what makes sense and what is worthwhile. Not many people can articulate the story and sell”
Andry Tanusdjaja, CPA, CA of TELUS
Andry Tanusdjaja starts his career in accounting field with TELUS. As a CA financial analyst, he gains his experience through corporate accounting, business analysis and internal audit. By going through the mentorship program in TELUS, he develops his networking skills in business accounting.
Why CPA?
The CPA designation provides the necessary financial experiences he needs in the working market. CPA has trained him the advanced analytical skill for his career path. In addition, CPA provides him the opportunity to develop the understanding of strategic and operational level of business.
Get a mentor
Tanusdjaja suggests all new entrepreneurs to get a mentor. This will enhance the professional experience in the workplace and receive objective and constructive feedback. Mentor can help new entrepreneurs to set clear goals, deadline and follow-up; in fact, mentor can cultivate the relationship and become more proactive in business.
Ask the right questions
Tanusdjaja recommends all new entrepreneurs to focus on the “why” instead of “what”. Even though small details matter, but business entrepreneurs should focus on big picture as well. Therefore, entrepreneurs should have the habit of keep asking questions because it will help them lead to the right direction.
How can you add value?
New entrepreneurs should always look at situation in unbiased perspective. They should ask themselves if there is any way to improve or do better in the future.
Set Objective and break it down
Tanusdjaja believes goal setting is extremely important for new entrepreneurs. They can break their life goals to one, five or ten years period in writing, and this will help them define an accurate direction towards their career. It is important to provide measurable and concrete objectives with deadline and priority.
Network Network
Tanusdjaja suggests all new entrepreneurs to focus on what they can give to others first. They should start by listening to what other people need. In addition, it is important to be involved in other non-work activities to expand network opportunities.
“Your path is unique and there is no one formal path to success”
Group Answers
The panel believes the best way to get out of the comfort zone is to increase networking activities. It is easy to stay in the office, but life experience should involve both personal and professional aspects.
Small business or family business experience has helped them to be more sensitive to dynamic. They could be more related to the similar clients experience and provide better services for those clients.
Volunteer is important for any business entrepreneurs because it can help them impact on other people’s lives. Moreover, it can energize team members and give back to community.
Andrea Mincov is a professional lawyer who concentrates on trademarks and intellectual property law. Mincov’s presentation contains lawyer’s perspective on business law. This seminar will bring attention to any business owners who are thinking about trademark their logos.
Mincov has been practicing law in Russia for over 20 years. He made his career decision when he helped his father fight for his rights of his music ownership. His passion starts to develop when he focuses on intellectual property lawyer. In Canada, he reestablished his credential and starts his own law firm and the company of Trademark Factory.
Mincov emphasizes there are 7 myths business owners have toward trademarks.
1st Myth: Too Small, Too Early
During the startup stage, many business owners believe it is still an early stage of their company to acquire trademark. Sometimes, business owners do not understand the potential to get trademark.
Qualifying for trademark questions:
Will it be ok to lose brand?
Will it be ok for others to use your brand?
Will it be ok if someone offers you for your brand?
Mincov believes business owners need to think about their business vision in the future. Moreover, brand will be one of the most valuable assets in any business. It is important to set a good foundation to protect the asset. Therefore, business owners need to prepare their intellectual properties to avoid any unnecessary future business affairs.
“It is not about the size today, it is the future”
2nd Myth: Own name, logo, and slogan
Many business owners believe if they trademark their business name, logo or slogan, they are the owner of those names. However, they could not own those names, logos, and slogans because in trademark, they are the ownership of mental link of those names, logos, and slogans.
In other words, trademark is a way to help business owners to protect the goods and services. If the goods and services are different, it is possible to have multiple trademarks of names, logos, and slogans. Mincov suggests business owners to carefully list their goods and services before they apply for trademark.
3rd Myth: Describe
Trademark is a way to distinguish business and describe the quality of slogan. Many business owners simplify their trademarks either too generic or misdirect. Business owners need to be crystal clear about their company directions. Slogan with a lack of company’s characteristic will not get approved by the trademark examiners.
“The name you choose only will tell about your business you do only if other people can understand it.”
4th Myth: Use and Register is the same
Many business owners believe if they use their names, logos, or slogans long enough, they can register. They consider use and register as same principle. However, Mincov points out business owners can use their names, logos or slogans, but they might not able to register because goods and services.
Trademark examiners check on registered trademark database, but not unregistered database. It is likelihood that business owners will get challenged on trademarks that are unregistered. Trademark is a tool that protects the value from business owners; moreover, owners need to consider the risk of unregistered trademark.
“You run your business for you, not for trademark”
5th Myth: Company name and Domain Name
Many business owners believe they have the trademark protection if they corporate their company name or own the domain name. Mincov mentions trademark only protects the goods and services on the name, logos, and slogans. Therefore, business owners can still use the domain name even if the name has been incorporated.
It is important to know where the business is heading. Different direction will have different goods and services; nevertheless, even if owners have the domain name, it does not mean they have the trademark on the domain name.
6th Myth: People think it is quick and easy
Many business owners believe trademark process is similar to incorporation process. Trademark takes 18 months. Out of those 18 months, file application process will take 7 months. Trademark examiners will be assigned to review the application. If there is argument, the process will take longer. After convincing, business owners will be expected to advertise the trademark logo to public for anyone who will object to the process. The finalize process will take another couple of months.
7th Myth: Trademark is expensive
Business owners avoid trademark because of the cost and process. However, Mincov believes trademark can be expensive, but rebranding can be more expensive. If business owners believe trademark can bring values, they will not consider as expensive.
The general fee in Canada is $450 per application. In United States, it is $325 per class. It is cheaper to trademark without lawyer’s involvement, but they will need to face the trademark examiners alone. In Canada, trademark can be renewed after 15 years of usage; in United States, it is 10 years.
Once trademark is granted, there is no ongoing fee.
TM symbol is used for unregistered trademark and the little R with a circle is registered trademark. Mincov suggests all business owners should use TM as much as possible on everything. This will alert other business owners that the trademark is in progress and start to protect names, logos, and slogans. Psychologically, people will treat the name, logos and slogans different.
Name: TYPEABC – The art and science of entrepreneurship, business and startup
Presenters:James Chang, Jerome Ng, and Vincent Yen
This presentation is another business mentorship seminar provided by TYPEABC. The seminar focuses on local business entrepreneurship startup experience. Moreover, the purpose is to provide insight for any entrepreneurs who are planning to startup a business.
James Chang, Founder of YOLO express
Chang believes entrepreneurs are no different from normal people except with different mindset. Mindset sets a strong start in any business startup.
Everyone has their own unique runway in their lives and there are four questions need to consider that can impact the runway.
What type of entrepreneur are you?
What is your martial/personal/family situation?
How much funding can you acquire?
What industry are you in?
Based on the statistic today, there are 2.7 million Canadian entrepreneurs and 1.1 million small business incorporated in Canada. However, 80% of them leave their current jobs for startup voluntarily. Two major groups are generation Y and over 50s.
People are not considered to be entrepreneurs because based on stats, 50% of small business fail, workload over 50 hours per week, and the income is unpredictable and uncontrollable. People are afraid because they do not know where to start.
Some of reasons people decide to be entrepreneurs are control lifestyle, change passion to income generating business, combine skills, personal circumstances and life changing experience moments.
How to evaluate an idea?
Chang suggests starting to develop a 30 page business plan. He recommends the Outside Impact framework that can help entrepreneurs to go through step by step to determine if their idea is permissible in the market.
The framework considers seven categories: opportunity, uncertainty, team, strategy, investment, deal and exit.
In opportunity, entrepreneurs need to consider what kind of industry they should target. They need to pick the market that their business ideas are suitable. They need to calculate business present value. Moreover, they are required to research if it is acceptable and their direct or indirect competition. In addition, they need to know the best time to launch their product and how fast competitors will response to the launch.
Entrepreneurs need to brainstorm the possible uncertainties and the market size. They need to create plan to handle any possible outcomes outside of their business plans. They need to seek for team if they have the right partners, dynamics or leadership. Create the right strategy is important to business plan because it will show the direction of the business in the future. Entrepreneurs need to know if their funding is sustainable or if it is necessary to seek for other investment options. Moreover, they need to know the expectation from investors and develop exit strategy.
After the startup, entrepreneurs need to start developing operations activities. Areas in operations they need to consider:
Production
Technology
Sales & Marketing
Finance & Accounting
Customer Services
Business license / Regulation
Insurance
Legal & Contracts
Partner or Hiring Staff?
Entrepreneurs can use these two questions to determine their need of partners or hiring staff:
Do you need a partner that can create trust? Better communication? Share risk and wealth? Create in-house expertise?
Drowning in daily task that need to divide up time management?
Chang emphasize it is important for entrepreneurs to find a suitable mentor or adviser because they can provide lifetime learning and growing on personal or career aspects.
Chang recommends every entrepreneur to always network. It is important to trust within and do not let doubters affect any decision-making.
“Be prepared to lose, so you need to be resilient, roll with punches”
“Courage to follow your heart; stay hungry, stay foolish…”
Jerome Eg, Founder of Venuespot
Jerome starts his entrepreneurship life from the inspiration of Steve Job’s video. He realizes many company are merging and he decides to take the opportunity to become an entrepreneur. After graduation, he starts to research and learn method of acquiring companies and other leadership courses online.
He realizes business starts by solving a common problem in the world and offering something in value to clients. Therefore, he decides to startup his business of Venuespot to help clients to find meeting room for their events.
Build something, measure and learn
Jerome needs to build something quickly and get it out of the market. He will receive the market feedback and change the product based on the feedback. He starts to build website to receive more feedback from clients. Furthermore, he receives feedback and builds it back to the system. It is a cycle.
Technical and Business
When company grows, Jerome needs a professional that can deal with technical aspects in business while he focuses on business. He finds a qualified candidate for his business, but the candidate refuses due to lack of insecurity of his business. He needs to demonstrate he can take care of business. One of the major business issues is funding. He seeks opportunity at 500+ startup for investment and able to get into acceleration program for training. He receives the funding opportunity and have the ability to joint force with the candidate.
3 Takeaways
Possible
Entrepreneurs need to understand that things around their lives were built by someone like them, and those people will retire. People need to step up and entrepreneurs should take this opportunity to continue to create more innovative work around the world.
Hustle
Sometime is important for entrepreneurs to go backwards and look for solution. Things are depended on each other (A depends on B, B depends on C, and C depends on A). There is no manual to find solution; therefore, it is up to entrepreneurs to figure it out.
It is a journey
Entrepreneurship is a long personal journey that requires long-term vision. It is essential to never give up in life.
“Success is not always clear as straight line”
Vincent Yen, Founder of AirG
Yen realizes his passion in entrepreneurship when he has no passion to continue education. He starts many companies but mostly all fail. After he created the company called AirG, he decides to change his path to help other entrepreneurs to start companies.
AirG is a company over 120 employees to mobile social networking, entertainment, and gaming company that creates platform for users. The business model is mobile micro-billing and cross-platform. The future trend is wireless because it is the only way in this generation to do everything.
Yen emphasizes that look at failure is a part of success. In addition, he designs the art of failing concept for startup entrepreneurs to understand the value of failure.
The Art of Failing
Concept 1: Plan to Fail
Yen believes failing is an art and it is something entrepreneurs need to master. By looking at the failures, entrepreneurs can have the chance to think about all possibilities that competitors can react from the business idea. This will also help them to seek direct competitor advantage about others players in the market.
Concept 2: Recognize Failure
Yen wants all entrepreneurs to know fail fast means fail cheaply. Allowing others to challenge the business idea can make or morph business idea stronger and better. Recognize failure can be helpful at the early stage because it can help entrepreneurs to spend time or resources on something else if they recognize failure early. Therefore, faster they fail, faster they can do other success.
Concept 3: Learn from Failure
There is no such thing as redundant failure because each failure is a valuable experience. Many entrepreneurs do not talk about failures and they will not understand why they fail. It is a cycle and they will make the mistake again in the future. Yen suggests entrepreneurs to learn from their mistakes and review their mistakes. Entrepreneurs need to learn what is working; nevertheless, they need to learn what is not working as well.
Concept 4: Do not Fail to Fail
Failure is a process and successful entrepreneurs do not afraid to fail. Keep on trying because by not trying, entrepreneurs are for sure 100% failure. They will learn nothing and the cycle will continue.
Entrepreneurs need to be different and creative to become successful in business, and one of the traditional ways to get awareness from audience is to publish a book. Entrepreneurs should not think like a publisher or a writer, they should focus on more than just the book sales. Business sales do not come from book sales; they are from speaking seminars, spin-offs, boot camp and etc.
The business mind behind the business of publishing books is to create own reputation and get others to pay for everything. The average cost of cover, layout, editing and printing is about 4.5 thousand, and the average revenue is roughly over 33 thousand plus more.
There are 3 kinds of people:
Wonder things happen
Watch things happen
Make things happen
Entrepreneurs are the one who make things happen.
Business looks for simplicity; therefore, a length of 100 pages per book is the most effective. It is important to not let money get ahead of business. Entrepreneurs should always put client value in front of everything.
“Anybody can publish ebook, but not everyone can publish a book”
There are 8 steps to publish a book
Step 1: Primary objective
Entrepreneurs need to answer the question below in order to start publishing a book.
What do you want a book to do for you?
Most entrepreneurs want to publish a book to get leads, increase clients, or create opportunities to speak in public. Moreover, entrepreneurs need to figure out the main business purpose behind the book.
Step 2: Write the right content
There are many ways to write book. The most common ways are reporter style or interview style. In addition, it is important to write the content that can create creditability so audience and remember the writer.
Step 3: Design awesome cover
The first attraction from audience is the cover. The cover needs to be appealing and creative. Marketing is essential for the cover because it gives a better first impression of the book.
Step 4: Capture leads
Audience need to know where they can get the information about the book. A 30 second intro on a website can give a teaser to audience about the book. This is a call for action which can generate interests from audience and increase publicity in the market.
Step 5: Boost your sales
Entrepreneurs can use book to increase their reputation by giving it away to potential people. Instead of business card, books can create values and audience will spread the words around. This is a tool to do interview prospects and screen out the prospect to become potential clients.
Step 6: Get free publicity
Provide a couple of comments in the book to acknowledge them will increase business credibility. People who get acknowledge will market the book for free by spread around in their network.
Step 7: Get others to pay everything
Entrepreneurs can sell advertisements in the back of the book to generate additional revenue. Provide extra bonus chapters for audience can generate more revenue as well.
Step 8: Decide
A characteristic trait from successful entrepreneurs is that they decide quickly. Wealth people make fast decision making and rarely change their mind. However, broke people procrastinate their decision making and change their mind quickly.
Entrepreneurs need to understand to publish a book, 10 percent is the content and 90 percent is marketing. Marketing comes from creativity and entrepreneurs need to ensure they can get the book out to the market by capturing the right audience and target market.
Name: Increase your reach, response rate and revenue with webinars
Presenter: Patty K, solopreneurs of pattyk.com
Webinar is an alternative way to connect with people around the world using digital technology. Patty helps other entrepreneurs to develop webinars that can generate revenue effectively. This presentation gives a well introduction of how webinars can be used in businesses.
Webinar is a live presentation online that can be recorded or reused. Many entrepreneurs can use webinar to attract new clients or sell themselves in their desire business market. Many entrepreneurs can use this technology to expand or share resources to the business world.
How to make money with webinars
In order to gain new clients, entrepreneurs need to understand how to sell themselves in the market. Moreover, it is important to provide accreditation for clients to better understand the presenters.
Entrepreneurs can create online paid webinar classes to interact with clients. By providing different chapters can help entrepreneurs to promote their products into the market.
It is important to record all webinars because entrepreneurs can resell them to promote their products in the market. Recorded webinars can be resources for new clients.
Traditionally, business owners will use real people meet up to do group coaching. However, many people reject this idea because of fear. Webinar is a way to capture those audiences. Instead, webinars can provide them the same resources.
Webinars can be used as group club meet up as well. Entrepreneurs can provide online personal growth presentation to be a part of audiences’ progress of learning.
Education is the new market and webinars can be setup as classroom for audiences who want to learn from entrepreneurs.
There are four questions entrepreneurs need to answer before developing webinars.
How are we going to use your information in the real world?
Why they need you and how you can help them?
What the audience should do?
How audience can use your services?
It is important to be different from the competition. Creativity is the key to capture more clients.
Magic Marketing Formula
Attention -> Interest -> Desire -> Action
Many entrepreneurs in business take short cut from attention straight to action and end up failure; in fact, any short cuts will only provide temporary solution. Moreover, entrepreneurs need to go through these stages step by step.
However, webinar be used to fill interest and desire stages. Examples of functions that webinars can be used for interest and desire are listed below.
Interest
Desire
More Information
Case studies
Detail
Examples
How to work
Before & After
What it is about
Testimonials
Answer questions
As for action, entrepreneurs need to have call of action at the end of their webinars. For example, entrepreneurs can make offer to clients to purchase the product or invite clients for additional phone call or strategy sessions.
Know, Like, and Trust
People prefer to do business that are or have interests; therefore, connection and relationship are important. Webinars can build “know”, “Like”, and “Trust”
Chance to show entrepreneurs personalities
Hear entrepreneurs voices
Interact and get to know better about entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs can demonstrate their expertise
Some other facts that can trigger building relationship with clients:
Leave time for offers
Start on time, leave on time
Structure based on attendees
In average, the effective webinar only last one hour long. Extend webinar time can be arranged depends on current audience.
Content Marketing
Webinars can be reused for many purposes. Entrepreneurs can record the webinars and upload to social media to expand their markets. Webinars can be converted to audio and upload to podcast. When webinars are uploaded to media channel, it can be embedded to blogs and website. Moreover, webinars can transform to presentation slides for audience to download.
Three biggest mistakes
When entrepreneurs present their webinars with no interaction or emotion, such as reading from script, audience will feel boring. When webinars is all focus about entrepreneurs, audience will reject because there is no value added information. Audience expects what webinar can teach them and it is important for entrepreneurs to know what audience wants.
Another mistake entrepreneurs make on webinars is input too much sales or too less sales. Audience expects sales and offer, but the entrepreneurs need to know the balance when they present their webinars.
Last mistake entrepreneurs can make on webinars is giving away too much. Audience will respect and value information that is not free. Provide enough give away to capture audience attention and offer additional information from offers or sale.
The ideal marketing webinars
Webinars need to have
Build know, like, and trust
Quality and relevant content
Call to action
Entrepreneurs need to engage the audience with personality, interaction and valuable information. Moreover, entrepreneurs need to capture audience with interest and desire. Lastly, it is important to let audience know there is something to buy and what is the next marketing.
5 Common Myths
Here are the 5 myths about webinars:
You need a huge list to succeed
You need fancy equipment
You need a digital product to sell
You have to appear on camera
Webinar program is expense
Entrepreneurs need to understand that webinar can be very effective with small group of audience. Equipment for setting up webinars can be bought anywhere. Entrepreneurs can sell their services using webinars and almost anyone can create webinars.
Presenter: Elizabeth Larson, CEO of Watermarklearning
It is vital for professionals to be able to influence stakeholders. In addition, it is difficult to influence others without authority. Since the key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority, it is important to know how to influence others.
Professionals, such as Business Analysts, are considered as change agents. They bring changes to the organization. Stakeholders expect positive changes from them; therefore, influencing is the significant key to communicate with upper management.
There are two major pitfalls many to professionals need to know. The first is to “bring solution” and second is to “influence command and control”. In organization, professionals are hired by upper management to suggest solutions, not decision makers.
There are four major barriers that limit professionals to influence others in the organization.
Organizational Hierarchy
Fear of Failure
Time
Incompatible goals
Influence versus Persuade
Influence means compelling force or produce effects on the thoughts, action and feeling of others. On the other hand, persuade means urge to change or use communication to deliberately change. In addition, professionals plan more during influence method, but sense of urgency and less planning that is called persuade method. There is a difference between manipulate and influence. Manipulate is to influence skillfully in an unfair manner.
Five Influence Tactics
Type
Description
Rational Persuasion
Using facts, figures, and statistic
Inspirational Appeal
Use emotion to lead others
Consultation
Act as advisor to make recommendation
Personal Appeal
Use personal relationship
Form a Coalition
Use interest to lead others
Power versus Authority
Power means the ability to impose one’s wills, which means “to be able to”. Nevertheless, authority is a form of power, which means “to authorize to do so”.
There are 6 forms of power:
Coercive (Using threatening punishment)
Referent (Refer someone who has more power to order others)
Reward (Provide incentives when completion)
Legitimate (Using authority or power to give order)
Coercive is the weakest form and legitimate is the strongest form. All power can categorize into two types: expert and personal. Expert power is the ability to influence based on expertise, knowledge and past experience. Moreover, personal power is the ability to use inspiration others, resides others and not being vested by the position.
The Influencing Formula
“Trust” + “Preparation” + Courage = Influencing without authority
Professionals use personal power on Trust and courage, and they use expert power on preparation.
There are 3 steps to complete the influencing formula
Step one: Build Trust
Based on Covey’s 4 core of credibility, professionals need integrity, intent and capabilities to get results, which is trust.
There are some ways to build trust and destroy trust:
Build Trust
Trust Busters
Give credit when credit is due
Gossiping
Build relationship
Micromanaging
Inderstand the stakeholders world
Withholding information
Transparent communication
Creating competition
Owning the road block
Abdicating than criticizing
Take it for the team
It is easier to ask for forgiveness
Step two: Prepare for the influence event
The characteristics of trusted professionals are experience, confident, proactive, and charisma. To become a trusted professional, it is important to know the impact and able to answer the question. Therefore, it is significant to be prepared to answer all questions.
Professionals can use SARIE method, which is Situation, Analysis, Recommend action for decision, Implementation and then Evaluation. Follow SARIE can help professionals to lead their solution.
“Facilitate implementation and evaluation”
“Fortune favors the prepared mind”
Step 3: Courageous
Professionals have obstacle in courage when their minds wrap around “what if I fail??” In addition, professionals also have obstacle when they feel others will not let them.
Professionals need to switch from WIIFM, which is the abbreviation of “what is it in for me?” to WIIFO, which is “what is it in for others”.
“Courage without preparation is foolish, and courage without trust is foolhardy”
“To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice”
5 Tips for influencing others
4 cores of credibility
Treat them as partners – collaborate
Understand their world and timing
Be clear about the goals/ objectives, motivation and how the idea helps other
Name: The Non-Dilutive Roundup: Funding Alternatives to Balance your Capital N Needs
Presenter: Rizwan Kheraj, Robert McGarry, Stephanie Sang, Paulina Cameron, Marc Drouin, and James Suk
This meeting seminar is to provide funding resources for startup entrepreneurs. There are other alternatives, such as government grants, in Canada that can provide additional supports for startup owners. Presenters in this meeting are specialized in funding and they are willing to assist startup companies to be successful in Canadian economy.
Industrial Research Assistance Program, IRAP, is a federal government program to help accelerate technology companies. The program provides funding support and advisory services for small and medium enterprises (SME)
IRAP works with over 9,385 SMEs and over 1853 companies successfully received funding in 2012. 80% of companies are less than 50 employees and generate one dollar to 10 dollar values ratio. IRAP uses monthly cash flow method, which means companies are required to submit monthly claims to receive funding.
IRAP uses the model of client innovative strategy that focuses on R&D, youth employment, market assessment, technology validation and business innovation access. Companies are encouraged to contact with IRAP advisors for specific requirements. IRAP requires companies to have moderate and reasonable risks and provide benefits to Canada.
During assessment, candidates need to demonstrate their needs and wants. This includes their milestones and their offer. The only obligation is when companies are accepted and decide to move outside of Canada, they are required to pay back the funding.
Robert McGarry, Concierge Advisor, NRC Concierge
NRC Concierge is to help startup companies to seek for opportunities in federal and provincial programs. The service is personalized and free for SMEs and it also facilitate SMEs path-finding.
The service has three phases: focus, expert information, and international linkage. Concierge advisors will advocate SMEs to go through all phases. NRC Concierge will help any companies at any stage of their business cycle.
Candidates are required to be incorporated, innovation and at least have one full-time employee. They are also required to submit a business draft plan with 2 years financial forecast.
NRC Concierge uses matching equity, and expects companies to know their terms and needs in advance.
Stephanie Sand, CEO of Grant Consulting
Grant Consulting is a company that helps startup companies to apply for grants. Their areas of services focus on operational, project, hiring and team training. They have 90% successful rate based on their one on one service approach.
Grant Consulting encourages companies to apply when they are in need of R&D, innovation, new function, employment, improving skills, and market expansion. Overall, Grant Consulting will assist companies that will improve Canada economy.
A successful application will have these elements:
Establish goals
Research
Understand requirements: eligibility, commitment , and reporting
Needs and wants
Deadlines and planning ahead
Other funding resources provided by Grant Consulting:
R&D
Research Net
General
Canada Business Network, Civic info BC, Community Futures
Arts
Canada Council & BC Arts Council
Media
Canada Media Fund
Non-profit
Charity village
Other
Contests
Grant Consulting only look at current available grants.
Paulina Cameron, Business Development Manager, Futurpreneur Canada
Futurpreneur is a nonprofit organization that helps startup companies and pre-launch coaching. They work with 40 different community partners, and they provide many coaching programs, such as Startup Financing or Momentum mentorship.
They are looking for applicants who are in the age range between eighteen and thirty-nine. Their companies must be a startup, full-time, and have good credit score. They expect all applicants to provide formal business plan and 2 years forecast.
Successful applicants are able to receive funding up to $45,000 with low interest rate of prime plus three percent. Futurpreneur uses the model of character-based and 5 year repayment schedule.
Futurpreneur Canada also provides mentorship program that only offer to companies that operates less than 12 months. There is no industry restriction, but the applicants need to have over 50% ownership of the company. They also offer business plan template training and advisor for support.
Marc Drouin, Senior Manager, BDC
BDC is the only bank that dedicates their services to entrepreneurs. Their objective is to accelerate the success of entrepreneurs businesses. BDC focuses on unsecured SMEs and have high risk tolerance.
BDC designs to meet and protect cash flows with terms and conditions with entrepreneurs. In addition, their credit decision goes beyond the number, and BDC offers Lines of credit option for clients.
In most of the banks, they are required high volume of certainty from clients to protect themselves if clients did not pay back. Therefore, they usually increase high interest rates to cover the risk. However, BDC is less risk diverse than other banks.
James Suk, Partner, Boast Capital
Boast Capital is a company that provides non-dilutive financing for SR&ED and IDMTC. They have technology advisors to assist clients with tax credit and other non-dilutive capital. They also offer angel mentorship for clients.
Their advice for future startup companies:
Pay yourself and staff
Understand between segregate development versus commercial activities
Incorporate company and ensure IP ownership
The common pitfalls for companies have these elements:
Poor documentation
Focus on feature & function versus underlying technology
Confusing business logic with core logic
Boast Capital also suggests companies that have high contractor wages and low salaries will potentially trigger CRA audit. Companies with significant increase in Income Tax Credits will also trigger CRA audit as well.
It is important to claim SR&ED and IDMTC properly and Boast Capital can help companies to be risk adverse.
All presenters provide valuable services that will potentially help startup companies’ owners to have a successful start on their businesses. It is strongly suggest all startup entrepreneurs to look for advisors for programs that fit the needs of the current companies operation.
Name: Mastering Your Business for Maximum Profit & Success
Presenter: Colin Sprake
Colin Sprake is a driven individual who encourage business owners to exceed their potentials. Sprake believes people cannot break their limits usually the problem is within themselves. The number one thing to grow business is all about networking and the number one thing to fail business is pre-assume judgment.
In networking, people can classify as 3 different categories: connectors, collectors, and jerks. Sprake emphasizes comfort zone is equal to killing zone, which means it is important to continue learning. Learning comes from visual, audio, kinesthetic, and sensory. The quickest way to learn is from kinesthetic, which involves engagement and involvement. Therefore, action is everything and the way you see things is everything.
“More successful you are, more you assist the community”
“Bigger the network, bigger the success and more profit”
Toxic Ingredients
Toxic ingredients are things that prevent people to be successful. There are five important toxic ingredients that need to address.
Toxic Ingredients # 5: Misguided Arrow
Misguided arrow means people do not have a clear target of their businesses. Wrong targets or directions can misguide people to something they do not want.
This toxic ingredient can be addressed by VDT, which is “Vivid Vision”, “Dynamic Focus”, and “Tenacity”.
Vivid Vision is to have a crystal clear of the business vision and the vision what the business looks like in five years. Dynamic Focus is to ensure not to do anything outside of the business plan. It is not necessary to waste any time on activities that are not aligned with the current vision. People need to ensure they have five years vision and one year plan because plan can change.
Activities can be either dollar making or non-dollar making. People spend time on activities that are not aligned with productivity. Business people consider that as ADD, which represents Another Darn Distraction. It is important to know the intention and the purpose of any activities. Moreover, people should attend to meeting that is income producing meetings/activities. In business, by adding more product or services will dilute business time; unless, the existing products are successful.
Tenacity is to ensure people will do what it takes to accomplish the vision no matter what.
“Vision without action is hallucination, and action without vision is clueless.”
Toxic Ingredient # 5: Ineffective Networking
Without proper ways to network in meeting can create ineffective networking. Ineffective networking waste business time and reduce productivity.
This toxic ingredient can be addressed by WIN, which means “Where”, “Intention” and “Need a message”.
People need to know where they should meet the right network. Many business people are in the wrong meet up group. A rule of thumb is to go to meetings where successful people hangout and hangout where business potential market hangout.
This can be divided into two Vs: victors and victim. Victor means to grow together and Victim is to stop growing together.
People need to know what their intention to attend those meetings. Successful people are out in the meetings to make money and build up businesses. They focus only on money because nice people do not pay the bills. Successful people always have the mindset of going out there and make money. It is acceptable to go and build relationship, but it is important to put the element of money in the process.
People need to know what their message is. It is important to emphasize that “solution creator” is the main message. Elevator pitch is not always effective because it does not explain to people the message. People need to create something that people will capture their attention for more detail. Therefore, people need to craft a message that is out of conventional way of thinking.
Businesses only have 2 rules: your rules or customer rules. Successful businesses set from your rules, not customer rules. Clients respect businesses that run in business owners’ rules, not clients.
“Any clients will remember you on how they experience with you and how you make them feels”
The 4 steps to create an effective message:
1) Do not mention your company name
2) Do not mention your title
3) Create “I want that, but I do not know what it is “ to clients
4) Expect only 2 people to response
In business, rules should be broken and it takes creativity to make money.
Toxic Ingredient #3: Poor Follow Up
People tend to forget it is very important to retain the clients’ database with proper follow-up.
There are two ways to convert prospects into clients: referrals and outrage offers. By creating outrage offers, it will build up credibility. Outrage offer can be created by very set rules and extreme well communication. It is important to know who can give the outrage offer to. These people can help business to get on board with more creditability. People with great attitude tend to have greater success in business.
It is more difficult to convert prospect to clients than receive referrals from existing clients. Current clients bucket list can leak, so it is important to retain and follow-up. Reputation is everything in business.
“You are a solution creator, not “can’t” installer”
Toxic Ingredient # 2: Wrong Focus
Typical business people tend to have the breakdown of 25% production, 65% operation and 10% sales/marketing. However, successful business people have the breakdown of 25% production, 10% operation and 65% sales/marketing.
Typical business people tend to focus on operation because it is their comfort zone. Nevertheless, successful business people will focus on sales and marketing.
Typical business people think it is significant to have the best system in place, but sales will fell apart. In addition, successful business people will think it is important to have the best sales because if business generates enough sales to hire others to do the operation.
“In your income hours do income earning activities”
Toxic Ingredient # 1: You
People can do anything if they put their mind into it. People should stop focusing on excuses and focus on results because people tend to have pre-excuse before the real excuse. People should think about rewards instead of penalties. Most people are pessimistic. However, what people fear of will expand. Therefore, people need to put positive energy and overcome the little voice in their mind.
Name: Packing a Punch – The Business behind the world’s fastest growing sports organization
Presenter: Dana White, and Tom Wright
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a fast growing professional sports organization in the world. Dana White, the president of UFC, will share his business mind behind the organization. Along with Tom Wright, the Managing Director of UFC, and the moderator from Team 1040, Bro Jake Edwards, White is prepared to motivate young entrepreneurs with his business insight and strategies.
Wright mentions UFC is used to be illegal in the sports entertainment due to health and safety issues. In addition, Dana White has inherited many liabilities and risk when he brought UFC. Working along with White, UFC has presented strong regulation and creditability. Within five years, UFC is the top 3 sports entertainment.
Dana White chooses Vancouver to host UFC event is because he believes Canada has a strong market. He originally believes United States, United Kingdom and Mexico are considered as the primary markets for UFC; however, Canada has blown him away.
Dana White considers passion is the key that let him continue his organization. Dana White believes bad things happen every day, so he treats every day is a battle with other people. Moreover, he is never shown friendly towards his business competitors because he has the personality trait of competing until there is a winner.
Dana White emphasizes a majority of UFC fighters has college education, unlike the old street story from the movies. He believes UFC has moved from the old traditional philosophy to new generation where UFC is not just fighting, it is martial art.
“Two people fight, give a punch, and one will run. Fighting is in DNA. Everybody is an expert on who will win. Fighting works everywhere”
People expect sportsmanship and everyone treats others with respect. Dana White uses this strategy to connect fighters from different countries around the world to generate fans.
Dana White believes human beings are fascinating with fighters. Wayne Gretzky will only be well-known in Canada for hockey or LeBron James will only be known in United States for basketball. Nevertheless, Mike Tyson, the boxer, has blown everyone’s mind and everyone knows him. Fighters are everywhere and fighters have no barriers in districts around the world.
The biggest lesson in UFC Success
Dana White believes people do not have a lot of time in their lives because life is short. People should not drive to the jobs they hate; instead, they should work for something they are passion about and try to make money out from it. People are afraid and there is always a reason behind their afraid. People should step out and go for their passion because the worst case is to go back to your old job.
UFC is already out of business at the beginning. Dona White still believes his idea even though people are giving bad reviews. He continues his determination and is able to create the brand to a level no one ever thought of.
“Do not let anyone say your idea sucks. Do not care, believe what you are doing and kick some ass”
People believe Dana White is the face of UFC. In the interview, he emphasizes he only promotes fighters and Fighters are the real stars of UFC.
During 2012, UFC faces a downturn in Calgary due to injury of most fighters. However, Calgary fans are still support UFC and the event is all sold out. Dana White is planning to return to Calgary and return the favor back to Calgary fans.
How UFC is going to sustain for the next 10 years?
Dana White believes UFC is not going to the same route as boxing. In the old times, boxers were in passion to fight in the ring. However, now boxers are trying to avoid fighters. In UFC, He encourages fighters to fight and UFC will continue to expand.
Dana White has the vision to get fighters to represent their country to fight around the world. People will support their own countries and they will respect their fighters. UFC is a young men game and old fighters will get retired. New fighters will step up and the cycle continues.
In the old days, UFC starts with no social media and shows only appear once. Because of the convenience of internet, Dana decides to change UFC to fit the new generation trend and make the shows available everywhere.
Do fighters drive the brand or brand drives the fighter?
Dana White believes it works both ways. He will take anything that can give attraction to young people. The main purpose of any live events is to deliver the “holy shit” moments.
“UFC delivers the brand, and brand delivers the UFC”
Interesting perspective from Dana White
Dana White likes to use swear words in his interviews because he believes it is a trend to reach younger audience. He still uses flip phone because his only text and phone. When his phone is fully charged, the battery can last for 3 days; unlike smartphones where they need to charge everyday and only last for 1 day.
Name: Company of Young Professional Development Series – Connect Like a Leader and Harnessing the Power of Others through Superior Communication Skills
Presenter: Lisa Martin, Coach of Lisa Martin International
To become a successful leader, communication skill is the essential key success factor. Leaders need to craft concise messages through peers to ensure the proper communication is established effectively. In this seminar, Lisa will help the audience to change from a typical leader to a “RockStar Leader”.
The RockStar Leader Model
Martin believes in order for people to be at the top, they need to acquire and master the 6 skills from the model.
Type of Skills
Characteristic / Description
Capacity
Managing the major stress through demands
Self Managing
Shine Bright not Burn out
Consistency
Continue to create value through personal strength
Play with Strength, not Weakness
Consistent Delivery
Commitment
Passion through Work
Can-Do
Believe the possibility
Optimistic
Get Things Done
Character
Fundamental Skills
integrity and Trust
Connection
Build Meaningful Relationships
Clarity
All Skills are integrated together; therefore, leaders require achieving excellent in each element.
Connection Model
Leaders need have the ability to create meaningful relationship. Leaders should surround themselves with passion. Moreover, leaders are like a connector and they are born to care generously and contribute to others.
Three steps for leaders to improve connection:
1) Connect & Care – Reach out and genuinely get to know all types of people
2) Listen & Learn – Hear and absorb new information and perspective
3) Influence & Inspire – Create visionary, lead with integrity and support others
The best leaders should always have self-awareness. Furthermore, leaders can seek their blind spots from others. People are not motivated by others; however, people are motivated by their needs. Leaders need to show best in interests of others, and leaders should ask great questions to understand others perspectives.
“To be heard, you have to listen well”
Probe for a Clearer Understanding
Martin believes there are three ways can help leaders to listen well. First, leaders can ask more detail about others by saying “Say more about that”. Second, Leaders can clarify others by saying “What do you mean when you say X?”. Lastly, leaders can confirm others by saying “You have mentioned X twice. Tell me what is important about that?”
Leaders need to use more “What” questions instead of “Why” questions.
Leaders can pick up senses based on others body language and emotion. Leaders need to keep in mind that enthusiastic is not equivalent to experience.
Leaders can go deep by follow-up with others by understand their next steps, the best way to mitigate their problems, understand the risks and the true reasons behind their problems.
Leaders seek to inspire and to believe themselves. They can take actions to make the difference. By influencing others, they can make changes happen. Moreover, leaders have to courage to connect like a leader.
Leaders traits can be learn from role models. Martin recommends future leaders to seek role models from different industries. Despite the question of quality versus quantity communication, Martin believes it is more important to create one meaningful relationship then multiple connections with people they might never connect you.
Martin also believes leaders need to take away the bias from different industries to create meaningful relationship. The barriers of unheard communication come from others who are not pay attention or not asking the right questions.
The strategy for leaders to achieve self-awareness is for leaders to be curious about personal growth and open up from feedback.
Presenters: Alano Edzerza, Noriki Tamura, Peter Dupuis, Sid Landolt, Darrell Kopke, Slow Jam Sundays, Panels, Graham Churchill, Theresa Lavrico, Taylor Conroy, and Miki Agrawal
Socialight aims to redefine all entrepreneurs to become socialite. The acronym of Socia”Light” is Leader, Impacting, Global, Humanity and Today. Socialight Conference is held in Vancouver for the first time and they invite local social entrepreneurs who believe “People, Plant, and Profit” as their leadership strategy for the community.
Alano Edzerza, Founder of Edzerza Art Works
Edzerza begins with a fancy job in BC, but he resigns due to the motivational impact from his family member. He sells all his processions and starts to work for himself. He creates Edzerza Art Works because of his passion.
“Work 16 hours for freedom, work for yourself, not other people”
He gives all his employees the tool they can use, and create the friendly work environment that promotes creativity. His product design inherits from his culture and attracts many occupations interests through social media. He takes up small community projects because he believes he can make a difference in the community.
Edzerza recommends entrepreneurs to seek mentors because he believes mentors can accelerate people’s potentials in different areas.
“Finding something you like, work hard and never work for someone again”
Noriki Tamura, Founder of Japadog
Tamura starts his dream of becoming an entrepreneur because of Richard Brandson. His business starts at 2005 and within 3 months, he opens up 7 locations in BC. His vision is to create the number 1 hotdog in the world and he demonstrates language is not a barrier.
Japadog means “Japanese Style Hotdog”. Japadog starts in Vancouver because Tamura believes Vancouver has a huge size of Japanese speaking community. He illustrates his role in Japadog is to solve daily simple problems. In Japadog, he is the quality control where he approves all the food on the menu. He suggests entrepreneurs not to focus on the mistake and try to understand the meaning behind the failure. He defines entrepreneurs as leaders who have the ability to get back up every time they face failures.
Tamura recommends future entrepreneurs should have a grand vision of what their successes. There is only one shot in life and they should do something they enjoy. The bigger the dream, more excitements will come. Grand vision will lead to actions that will lead to achievement.
Peter Dupuis and Sid Landolt, Founders of World Housing CCC Inc
World Housing is a company that provides one to one gifting housing model to the society. Dupuis and Landolt consider them as real estate adventurers. They emphasize instinct is one of the main ingredients that formulate his company. Instinct is built on knowledge and experience, so it is important to find the balance between knowledge and experience.
“Instinct relies on guts, and if there is instinct, act on it”
Social entrepreneurs create social change and they dare to dream. Dupuis and Landolt recommend future entrepreneurs to be prepared for any failure and create Plan B. They believe companies should have flexibility and be adaptable to the social changes. Companies with only one plan are equivalent to no plans at all.
World Housing forms its team based on culture. Dupuis and Landolt believe team with culture will create a direction through the mission and vision. Moreover, it is important to work with people have similarities (Engaging clients, Business partners, create leverage).
“If you want to be a good business entrepreneur, be with entrepreneurs.”
Dupuis and Landolt are considered as connectors who connect people. They believe connecting people is the ability of social entrepreneurs. It is essential to connect people with heart, not ego. If people are going through hell, people should continue. Dupuis and Landolt use “detaching” method, where people realize feeling pain and going forward are different.
Dupuis and Landolt never believe their work is done, and they believe there is no separation between work life and social life. If people do not take action, they will feel the feeling of “You should have”.
“Gesamtkunstwerk, the word that defines everything you done is the total work of art”
Darrell Kopeke, Founder & Skool Principal of Institute B
Kopeke starts his career life in a company that sells zipper in Hong Kong. During that time, Kopeke believe he never live up to 100% potential. He joins Lululemon and then creates Institute B. He believes self imposes limits where people restrict everything in life. People should learn the possibility and find ways to get over the barriers.
People tell stories and create labels about themselves. Words they use make up who they are in the society. People always blame others for mistakes; in fact, Kopeke believe social entrepreneurs blame themselves when problem occurs. People are responsible of their own life story.
People always complain about their lives because they do not have the valid reason to do something about it. Kopeke indicates people should take 100% responsibility.
“Change the story we tell ourselves. If it is not us, who is??”
“No Snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”
Aaron, Marlon, Ariel and Pat, Founders of Slow Jam Sundays (SJS)
Members of the group are best friends since the grade 12. Every member in SJS has common interest of slow jam. SJS starts up with Facebook page that shows videos of 90s. Their marketing strategy is to keep it simple, such as putting stickers everywhere they go. Their mission is to create good times for the community who are in passion of slow jam. They do not feel work is work; in fact, they feel it is their duty to provide what the audience want.
SJS recommends future social entrepreneurs to always raise their bar and always raise their standard. Entrepreneurs should keep things simple and surround themselves with good teams because they will support them one step a time and the right people will come. Poor planning and over expectation of what you can do practically will lead to failure. Entrepreneurs should always give back to society.
“Concentrate, Maintaining, and then Elevate”
Panel:
Vanessa Dawson, Founder & CEO of Evry and Girls Raising
Daryl Hatton, Founder & CEO of Fundrazer
Paulina Cameron, Business Development Manager of Futurpreneur
Meredith Powell, Co-Founder of The Next Big Thing
Ray Walia, Executive Director of Launch Academy
The panel is moderated by Moe Somani, CEO of SHO Business Group. He mentions based on stats, 75% of companies have funding problems, and there are three ways to solve the problem:
1) Sell some Shit
2) Save some Shit
3) Raise Funds
Crowd funding is one of the raise funds methods that use social media to tell story to the society.
The sweet spot of age for target market in crowd funding is between ages 18-29. Based on average, social entrepreneurs need five to fifteen thousand dollars to startup.Vancouver and Waterloo have a high percentage of people with high skill levels. All presenters believe it is time for Canadians to put themselves out in the market. Government provides refunds and programs, such as SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development), as incentives for startup companies.
Presenters encourage future social entrepreneurs to ask investors for advices. As investors know more about the business, they will have more confident to invest the business. Entrepreneurs need to demonstrate they are aggressive and confident with their ideas. Investors are looking for ideas that can become businesses. Sometimes investors will sell their ideas to their partners or peers to help business raise funds. Therefore, it is important for entrepreneurs to be prepared before the meeting with investors (Angel Investors, Equity Investors).
There is no portal for franchise fund-raising for Canada due to regulation.
Presenters believe mentor is important because mentor can lift startup companies. Vancouver has startup weekend meeting for entrepreneurs who have ideas but do not know what to do. Another suggestion is to create adviser group or meetup group. This will help people promote their idea with people around them.
Investors seek three factors at startup:
1) People
2) Product
3) Pay
Investors will put people as the first priority, then product, and lastly pay.
Presenters suggest future entrepreneurs to look at National Research Council’s Concierge Research or Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) that helps entrepreneurs to filter government funding programs. Entrepreneurs need to ask compiling questions, do not wait for perfect timing, understand the cash flow, do not be prepared for “No”, and do not fear failure.
Graham Churchill, National Technical Executive of IBM
In the future of Innovation, Canada is facing a problem of not invest enough in technology. This will create startup slowdown.
Churchill believes there are four factors to entrepreneurs need to have to face the startup innovation economy: data, mobile, APIs, and things.
Data is the new oil of economy because it data breaks the current traditional procedures, especially in manufacturing model. Companies need to stream data by taking data from different places and put them together to create new patterns.
There is a total of 25 billion dollar size market in the mobile apps. The average people spend 2 hours per day on app. Entrepreneurs should consider mobile app as a new communication to the market.
APIs is business function as a service. It is free because the providers get incentives. The developers can get paid based on usage or transaction fee. Companies can take data, do analysis and sell it. The internet of things has the ability to identify where the problem is and when it needs it. It provides the solution that knows when and where the problem occurs. Precision agriculture is evolving in this generation.
Churchill mentions IBM Softlayer Cloud that helps entrepreneurs to store files at private or public clouds, BlueMix, which is a mobile app starter, and Cloud Market place, a place for entrepreneurs to host their APIs and apps.
“Let’s build a smarter planet”
Theresa Lavrico, CVO of Socialight
Lavrico believes people should ask themselves if they are currently doing things that worth their lives. Social entrepreneurs should understand that people are hungry for love, not food. Leadership is empowering other leaders. People need to combine things they love and things they are burning for.
Everyone has the opportunities to write a different future and it is important to focus on people, planet and then profit. The difference between business and social entrepreneurs is the idea of solving social problems. Moreover, there is always a connection between you, your business, the society and the world.
“I’m not telling you it is going to be easy, I am telling you it is going to be worth it”
“If you build it, it will come, so what is your legacy?”
Tayler Conray, Founder of Change Heroes
Conray believes he can make a difference in Ecuador. To help the community, he promotes the $100 young entrepreneur experiment to a local elementary school. He asks grade five students to use their creatively to use $100 and change to profit. The experiment raises from $1,800 to $18,000.
“Minga” means to drop everything and help with community project in Kenya. Conray is touched by the “Minga” spirit in Kenya and decides to help out the community. He creates a company named “Change Heroes” by helping the community to build school in Kenya. He uses the crowd funding technique to help children to have the education they deserve.
Miki Agrawal, Social Entrepreneur, author of “Do Cool Sh*t”
In this generation, there is no more guarantee out of college. Agrawal emphasizes the society today is created by people, and people have the power to create reality. “
“The mystery of life is when people never know when it will end”
Agrawal starts her social entrepreneur life when she figures out she could not continue her soccer career due to leg injury. She opens a restaurant called “Wild Las Vegas” and produces her own cooking show.
She believes the life span of children in this generation will be shorter than their parents due to lack of health awareness. Therefore, she creates a TV show called “Super Sprowtz” to promote vegetables for kids. Currently, she creates a business in feminine underwear industry called “Thinx” to help million girls around the world who dropped out of school because of her period. She publishes a book called “Do Cool Sh*t” about her own entrepreneurship.
Agrawal believes there are 5 things entrepreneurs want to know before startup
1) You are as good as the 5 closest friends you keep
2) Master a skill
3) Solve a real problem
4) Purpose is your best motivation
5) Ask “How can I help you” vs “How can you help me”
“Leaders do not talk shit. Face people & you will face your own fears”
Name: Small Business Council Meetup – Discovering Opportunities for Growth by Expanding into Foreign Market
Presenters: Alice Chen, Cristina Falcone, Sandra Light, Arjan Stephens, and Rob Arthurs
Many companies are using expanding to new market as a strategy to grow their businesses. Import and Export regulation is important for business to ensure they are diversify the risks they are facing. The focus of this seminar is to introduce techniques for companies going through international expansion. The seminar invites Alice Chen, the CEO of Export Ventures Group to lead the presentation.
Cristina Falcone, VP of Government Relations of UPS Canada
Based on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), UPS Canada creates 80,000 jobs and introduces 500 million consumers up to this date. During the current economy, free trade agreement (FTA) is essential. Understanding the economy sector of Europe, Canada is ranked 12th in the list as global trade partners. Therefore, trade is the engine of the global economy.
In the next 15 years, GDP forecast will grow by 50 trillion and 74% will be expected to come from emerging market. 26% will remain from existing developed company. The main grow opportunities and industrialization will focus on Mexico, United Arab, South Africa and Vietnam.
Companies are recommended to implement supply chain strategy in the future to adapt the changes.
Falcone recommends Canadian Companies to visit CETA Benefit from Canada’s Economic Action Plan and Canadian trade Commissioner Service Resources for further detail.
Sandra Light, Trade Advisor, Small Business BC
Small Business BC is a resource center for business companies. They offer information about international trade, import/export coaches, trade regulation, HS code and logistic training.
Arjan Stephens, VP of Marketing & Sales of Nature’s Path Foods
The Nature’s Path Foods starts locally in Vancouver and believe organic will be a trend in the future. The company’s philosophy is to build on a fundamental value from underground and understand what the value is stand for. Stephens take the company oversea and transform from local to a large international corporation.
“Big Vision can achieve Big Things”
Rob Arthurs, Senior Manager of Export Development Agri – Food & Natural resources, BC Government.
Arthurs’s company sold all over 11 countries, including India, Hong Kong, and US, with the help of Federal and Provincial government. Arthurs recommends companies to look at Trade and Investment Representatives because they are designed to help international businesses discover the benefit of BC. It will help businesses to penetrate the market and avoid the minefield.
Arthurs also suggest companies to register BC Business Network to promote their business for free. There is also BC Business Opportunities Database for companies to access free resources for investments. BC government also provides contracts and grants for companies to startup international trade.
Group Answer
How do companies know if they are ready for Export?
Presenters recommend companies to learn from failure and receive feedback. International trade requires long time commitment and determination. Companies need to adjust their products based foreign market.
“Think International, Act Local”
There is a test from Canadabusiness.ca for companies to see if they are capable of international trade. The test will help companies to understand the general concept of import and export. Trade Data Online can also provide information for companies.
Companies need to have domestic success before going internationally.
How do companies determine what to go first?
Presenters suggest companies to look at geographic advantages, resistance, freight cost, and capital. People will come to companies that provide high quality. Companies should pick country that is closer to them and understand which strong culture that fits their companies.
What are the requirements to access foreign market?
Companies need to look at the Free Trade Agreement for any advantages. Companies need to understand the culture and the barrier of entry. It is beneficial to have roots from other countries. International trade is a two-way trade, so companies need to determine the demand and supplies from other countries.
How do you market in the current region?
Companies should be participating international and local trade shows across the world. Look at government grant, brokers and payment terms. Word of mouth is the best reference.
How do you handling logistic?
Companies need to review their supply chain strategy. Companies need to understand their ocean freight cost.
What are some restrictions in import and export companies need to be aware?
Canada Security Business will check and verify all export products. Government will initiate smell test to ensure products are approved by law. Some products, such as high-tech, require control; therefore, permit will be issued. Government will look at domestic sales. If the sales are too low, they will reject to help companies to export internationally.
Inspired by the original MMI coach T. Harv Eker, this seminar focuses on the money mindset that will help business owner to achieve financial freedom. Coaches use unique ways to break through the traditional seminar style and drive the whole crowd to their peak potentials. Here are the main summary from the workbook of the 3 days seminar:
Comfort zone is in direct proportion to income zone. Therefore, people need to find ways to expand their comfort zone. The main reason is people do not know what they want; therefore, clarity leads to power, power is the ability to act, and act upon the choices people want.
Financial Freedom = Choice to do what you want = Lifestyle without work or reply on others.
Income without work = Passive Income
Passive Income comes from Investment and ongoing business incomes, and the secret is to have multiple streams of income.
Financial Freedom = Working Income + Savings + Investments + Passive Income + Simplify
The World’s Simplest, Easiest and Most Effective Money Management Method
Money needs to separate into the follow categories:
1) 10 % Financial Freedom Account (FFA)
Create Golden Goose that can help people generate eggs (passive income)
2) 10 % Long Term Savings for Spending Account (LTSS)
Invest in long term investments, such as Real Estate
3) 10% Education Account (EDUC)
Create opportunity to learn new skills
4) 55% Necessities Account (NEC)
All the living expenses, such as food and shelter
5) 10% Play Account
Unleash the entertainment side to balance people’s life
6) 5% Give Account
Volunteer and charity
The number 1 wealth rule is to pay FFA. Broke people use the left over strategy by paying everyone else first, and then invest what is left over. Therefore, based on the law of attraction, like attracts like; money attracts money. The FFA acts like a money magnet.
Broke people believes work is to earn money for their current lifestyle. Nevertheless, rich people believe work is to earn money to invest and to create passive income and to become financially free.
Passive Income > Expenses = Financial Freedom
The Power of Beliefs
People’s physical world (Result) is a printout of mental, emotional, and spiritual. The physical printout is made out from blueprints. Each of us has a personal money and success blueprints already engrained in our subconscious mind. To change the result, the process of manifestation is “Thought”, “Feelings”, and then “Action”
People have beliefs and people believe their beliefs are true. However, beliefs are not true or false, they are only opinions. People have the power to change beliefs if people believe they can change.
Broke People believe the traditional “70 year plans”, which is get a great job, work hard and save money until retirement. However, this will not work anymore in the world today.
Rich people only believe three things:
1) The amount of money you earn from FFA
2) Return on Investment
3) Multiple Streams in Passive Income
People beliefs in their subconscious mind come from conditioning, and conditioning comes from method of verbal programming, modeling and specific incidents.
Using Money as example,
Verbal Programming is what they hear about money when they are in childhood.
Modeling is what people act about money when they are in childhood
Incident is what people experience about money when they are in childhood.
People need to recondition their beliefs by disassociate them. Two primary motivators are pain and pleasure. Since physical is memorable, people need to use pain and pleasure to relink those beliefs to new beliefs.
The reason people believe what they believe is because it had credibility from past information and programming. People need to re-examine their beliefs based on who they are and who they want to be.
The Steps to Change:
1) Awareness
2) Understanding
3) Reconditioning
Purpose of Money
The three pillars to make people are investment, real estate, and business. Therefore, all rich people have their own business.
To become successful, people need “the right you”, “the right knowledge” and “the right vehicle”.
The reason most people do not get what they want is they do not know what they want it. Four reasons to be rich: lifestyle, contribution, who, and value added from problems you solve for other people’s lives.
The reason most people never reach their financial potential is that they are poor receiver. People tend to feel unworthy, yet people feel alive when they are worthy. Since people are conditioned to give than receive, universe will stop giving. Whether people are worthy or not worthy is all make up story. Therefore, change the story and start feeling worthy.
Money Personality
There are four types of money personality
Type
Description
Characteristic
Saver
Save money as priority
Use Money as security
Spender
Spend money as priority
Treat Money as escape goal
Avoider
Run Away from money
Avoid Money Responsibility
Monk
Do not care about money
Money and Spiritual are mixed
No matter which type, the two keys for all money personalities are balance and preset structure.
If people relationship with money is full of anger, fear, guilt, shame or sadness, it will have a negative effect on their money. Any decision-making around money will be effected by emotions and emotions will lead your income, wealth and opportunities.
Negative emotions are like stuck energy, which is a form of incomplete communication.
Reframing the Past
Angry creates the negative emotion. People drag their past relationship into their current and future relationship. People who are angry are those who are not getting what they retaliate. Those people want to be right and yet they usually are most miserable. Anger can create sickness. In addition, since people do they best at that moment, people should do necessarily forgive.
Acknowledging Successes
Success breeds success. If the mind is comfortable and used to success, success becomes your path of least resistance. People should recognize and acknowledge successes, and then celebrate successes.
The Power of Action
There are four things people want in any situation: relationship, happiness, health and wealth.
People tend to hold back from taking action is because of fear. Since people’s minds are made for survival and protection, it is automated to signal warnings and danger.
The secret to freedom is to realize that it is not necessary to believe your mind. The secret to success is to learn to act in spite of fear. Successful people have fear, but they do not let it stop them to do what they want.
Name: Company of Young Professionals – Leadership Forum
Presenters: Ashleigh McIvor, Victor de Bonis, Susan Dolinski, Terry McBride
Company of Young Professionals (CYP) is one of the main leadership programs for young professionals in the Vancouver Board of Trade. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to learn from all the presenters in this event. All presenters will share their valuable experiences to help out all members of CYP.
Her inspiration originally comes from her idols, community heroes who love about their work. She believes by eliminating negativity will increase joy in her life. Her determination helped her to get back on her feet when she failed due to injury. By following her heart and passion, she once again proves to be the best of what she is doing. Her advice is to “make work not like work”.
“Doing what I love and maximize the quality of life”
Victor de Bonis, COO of Canucks Sports & Entertainment
His life lesson surrounds by one important word, which is relationship. All his career moves relate to his networking opportunities. His first job started in PNE; however, due to a rare opportunity, he created a networking relationship with his professor and helped him advance to a different job opportunity in KPMG. He made anther career move from KPMG to Canucks Sport based on his work relationship. His advice is to “create relationship no matter what because you do know where you will end up”.
“Be nice to everybody because you do not know what is around you.”
Susan Dolinski, VP of Communication & Social Responsibility in BCLC
Her passion starts by listening to people and engaging with community. Her career fulfills her passion because it fits her value. In addition, she demands herself to be a value member of high value team by continuing growth challenge. In BCLC, she switches from being a subjective leader to a thoughtful motivated speaker.
Her life success is based on three steps:
1) Follow my Heart
“You got to say “Yes” even if you are not confident. There will always people beside you and helping you.”
2) No Short Cuts
“No one is going to tell you the secret path”
3) Success comes from being prepared
“Actions and choices determine all opportunities”
Terry McBride, CEO of YYoga and Nettwerk Music Group
Terry chose music because of his passion and desire. When he realized the music he loves was not in the local radio, he started to produce his own music. He began to create partnership and incorporate his own company.
His physical condition starts to change when he joins yoga. He starts to understand music and yoga share the same philosophy, which is all about healing drama. Due to lack of capital, he sells his home to make his beliefs come true. Now both of his companies are national wide all start with his passion and desire.
His advice is to “believe you can make the world a better place”.
All presenters’ answers
They always follow their gut reaction because that is the right reaction. They always listen to their own intuition and be true to themselves.
The balance between work and family is important. When people are good at work, it does not mean they are good partner. Moreover, family’s spirit is one of the keys to get to where they are today.
Their advice to entrepreneurs who work with different generation in the workplace is to become a listener, humble and not to be afraid to work hard.
This is not just a seminar to become a successful salesman; in fact, this is a seminar to be a successful business owner. His presentation skill is aggressive and intense, yet his words and wisdom can open doors of opportunities in any working field.
What holds people back from achieving massive wealth & success?
He believes there are five aspects that hold people back from their dreams. The first is when people are in overwhelming state. The second is people do not understand why they want to be successful. The third is they do not know the rules and regulations to become entrepreneurs. The fourth is people do not know the strategy to ask or utilize other people’s money. Lastly, the last aspect is people do not know how to close the deal in business.
People need to believe in themselves. They need to find a motivation with strategy to drive them in success. It is important to sell yourself to others.
Two Types of People
Reason People: People with reasons that they cannot succeed in their life
Results People: People make you happy and find ways to solve problems
The relationship between marketing and sales are correlated. Marketers will bring the right people to the funnel. Sales will close the deals and generate revenue.
Belfort believes the core of business to monetize the value. He always asks himself the worst possible outcome before any decision-making.
“See your life as they are. Being Honest, not as worst as they are. See higher and find strategy to get them”
Belfort’s theory of achieving mastery of wealth & success consists of two worlds:
Master the Inner World of Wealth & Success
1) Emotional State Management:
People who want wealth & success have a common emotional state, such as certainty, clarity courage and confidence. On the other hand, uncertainty, overwhelm, fear and self-doubt should be overcome.
2) Empowering Beliefs:
People create two types of beliefs: Empowering and Limiting. Examples of Limiting beliefs are statements stop people from being all they can be, such as “If I get rich, I will be greedy” or “I am not good with money”. People with limiting beliefs tend to do three things: blame everything except themselves, justify everything, and they complain.
3) Vision Focus:
People need to have a clear vision of the future. They need to know where they see themselves in the future. People do not follow goals, yet they follow vision. It is important to share the vision and focus on things attracting your vision. If you complain, you will focus shit. This means you attract shit.
4) Thermostat / High Standards:
People need to set high standards. High standards will force people to overcome obstacles and find ways to break the bottleneck.
Master the Outer World of Wealth & Success
5) Entrepreneurship:
Being entrepreneurs will make mistakes, and those mistakes can help themselves to grow. Therefore, failing elegantly is important factor for entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship needs to know
Corporate Structure
Delegating Authority
IT Communication
Human Resources
Operations
Compliance
Accounting
Art of Brainstorming
Corporate Finance
OPM
6) Sales and Ethical Persuasion / Influence:
People need to sell themselves to the market to influence your beliefs to others.
Sales and Persuasion / Influence
How to get into Rapport
Creating Closable Presentations
Art and science of prospecting
Overcoming Objections
Tonality
Art of Looping
Being a Leader and visionary
Generate Massive Referrals
How to get intelligence
Creating customers for life
7) Marketing
It is important to find ways to funnel the right people and create awareness
Marketing – Offline
Direct mail / Response
Word of Mouth Campaign
Telemarketing
Network Marketing
Door to Door
Community Outreach Programs
TV / Radio
Educational Marketing
Promotional
Joint Venture
Newspaper / Journals
Testimonials
Outdoor Advertising
Public Relation
Marketing – Online
Website
Search Engine Optimization
PPC – Ad Words (Google)
Video Sales Letter
Re-Targeting (YouTube)
Sales Funnel / Email Marketing
Conversion Rate Optimization
IPhone Application
Social Media Strategy
Blogs
Google Hangouts
Affiliate Marketing
8) Multiple Streams of Income
Success people will find more than one ways to increase the revenue stream.
Multiple Streams of Income
Stocks and Bonds
Currencies
Commodities
Venture Capital
Real Estate
Including two worlds, successful people need to understand how to raise money and have the desire to learn and be mentored.
Successful businessmen require identifying the real target market because it is impossible to turn non buyers to buyers. If people feel fear, it could be excitement and Belfort refers that as reframing. If fear comes, Belfort suggests acting if you have the answer even if you do not.
Perfect plan does not exist in this world, so it is important to learn from the mistakes.
Belfort defines “Happiness” as “Not where you are right now, it is when you know the way or direction where you want to go”
Basic Entrepreneur Formula
The breaking point is to make massive actions. Therefore, people need the right plan to get the right actions. If something goes wrong, change one thing at a time.
Reciprocity
How the world works is to give value out first and they will return one by one. Belfort technique is to sell people things that are easy to buy. This will get them into the funnel and sell them something bigger.
During the communication with riches, Belfort believes the first 4 seconds of any conversation can determine the deal breaker. To establish the 4 seconds rule, Belfort needs to “Sharp as a Tack”, “Enthusiastic as Hell”, and “Expert in the Field”.
With these three tactics, Belfort becomes someone people want to listen to.
Any communication can be breakdown to two major sections: body language and tonality. Two things that must come across: “You care” and “You are just like them”.
Three elements of charisma from Belfort
Effective Tonality
Appropriate Body Language
Not saying stupid shit.
This will help create confident, persuasive, and professional in communication.
Five Elements of Human Influence
Love your product
Connect & Trust with you
Connect & Trust with your company
Action Threshold (Driven by Actions)
Pain Threshold (People make decision when they are in pain)
By understanding the human influence, people will create effective communication and create potential deal breaker.
Belfort introduces his famous Straight Line Sales Psychology, a sales technique that he implemented to build a fast growing brokerage firms at Wall Street.
Name: Small Business Council Meet up – Building and Maintaining a Remarkable Brand
Presenters: Jerry Gratton, Carley Bakker, Anne Donhoe,David Childs
The purpose of this seminar is to present techniques from a various presenters with their extensive background experiences. Techniques are to help the audiences understand how to build and maintain successful brands.
Here are some of the highlights I receive from the presenters:
Anne Donohoe, CMO of Mountain Equipment Coop
A strong brand requires being relevant and responsive. Brands should be differentiated. An effective brand can be a story teller and a listener. A good brand should be consistent, authentic and inspired.
“Building a strong brand is a journey; a strong brand starts from within”
It is important to understand consumers’ point of views. To maintain a remarkable brand, it is significant to response to bad reviews privately. Ignore the bad reviews from local directories will harm the reputation of the brand. Every open channel is a liability, so monitoring is necessary.
“Less is more”
Jerry Gratton, VP 1-800 Got Junk?
Communication is essential, especially internally. It is necessary to communicate within the company. If something is not working within the organization, it is important to step back and change.
“Hire the right people; treat the employees right”
David Childs, Founder and BRand Strategist, Living Blueprint
A remarkable brand comes from within. Pay attention to who you are and what you are tomorrow. The essence of brand is formed by decisions; therefore, it is important to study every decision you make.
All presenters answer:
A strong brand requires many essential keys. First, it is important to connect with emotional level. Second, it is important to establish a strong relationship. Third, instead of looking at others, we need to look at who we are. Lastly, brand drives loyalty, and we need to create values for customers.
The matrixes of a strong brand are listed:
1) Talk to everyone in the company
2) If any executive leaves, it is working
3) If employees leaves, it is not working
4) Stop looking outside, look inside of the organization
5) Tell customers who you are
If you inherit a bad brand, you need to “acknowledge the responses” immediately. You need to get more reviews from customers and understand the voice of the internal staff. Organizations need to own the problem by fess up to avoid any attack from customers. The best way is to open up with the customers by letting them know you are taking up the responsibility, and then move on.
Presenters: Seth Godin, Keith Ferrazzi, Nancy Duarte, John Jantsch, Brian Wong, and Mitch Joel
The seminar is very interesting and creative. All presenters provide their own unique views of their own marketing strategies. By learning from their experiences, we can create more stronger and effective marketing brand towards our current organizations. I will briefly summarize the knowledge I learn and inspire from each presenter.
Seith Godin
Traditionally, we believe if we push the market, people will buy because they want to be like others, but now the current market defeats that purpose. We need to show up differently and treat different people differently. We are in the connection economy, which means we create values by connecting with people. Human tends to like to do what other human beings are doing. We are trained to be followers because we want to fit in our society; therefore, we need to lead them, so we need to lead them by adding values of “Connect”, “Culture”, “Communicate”, Commit”, and “Clear”.
We need to bring passion, trust and care, so we can lead them. We shouldn’t be afraid or hide our fears because fear is a symptom of something and it is on to something.
“if we work a place that do not want us to do the art of marketing, we should leave.”
Nancy Duarte
We use symbols and stories to create a movement in our society. Our communication needs to move from report (Exhaustive) to Story (Dramatic). Furthermore, communication is like a journey, where we bring the big idea to many unique point of views. In any presentation, audience is the hero of the story instead of the presenter.
Presentation Structure can be displayed as sound wave. It always move from “What is” to “What could be”, and then to “What is”. At the end, it ends with the new norm.
“You have the power to change the world”
Mitch Joel
Marketing follows the four(ish):
1) Direct Relationship. The war of direct relationship is now all connection relationship with consumers. Everyone is entitle to have direct relationship with anyone. We can create different channels to create relationship. When we create values in the system, the values will return.
2) Sex with Data. Traditionally, our market strategy is linear or straight line. Now our society involves with circular relationship, which includes social media and network. Therefore, we need to personalize the data to create the ability to provide different values. Example will be Amazon and price check
3) Utility. We cannot just advertise the products to our consumers, yet we need to create values with utility for the consumers. Dish tip app, Sit on squat app, and LEGO 3D are examples that provides more than services. They provide useful information to enhance consumers’ experiences.
4) One Screen. We are moving from multiple screens (computers, laptop and mp3) to one screen (Iphone). The only screen that matters is the screen in front of the consumers.
John Jantsch
We need to stand out of the crowd and rethink the customers’ experience. In addition, we should avoid the crowd because the crowd makes us boring, predictable and change.
“Creating loyal customers is mostly about the right customers choosing you”
Three main keys are Clarity (Why, Who, and What), culture (Transparency, Autonomy, and Consensus), Context (Narrative, Language, and Community). All three keys together create the drive of marketing.
The traditional organization map follows from marketing, content, sales and then service. However, 57% of a typical purchases decision is made before a customer has been talk to. We need to modify the organization map that follows “Know”, “Like”,”Trust”, “Try”, “Buy”, “Repeat”, and then “Refer”.
“Listening is prospecting, teaching is presenting, Insight is information sharing, story building is nurturing, networking building is closing”
“Anyone can make anything, but only the new breaks something else”
Brian Wong
Mobile life is like a series of moments. We live in moments, we consume in moments and we want things now. The ability to generate emotion is significant because it creates happiness. The science of happiness is PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Positive Relationship, Meaning, and Achievement).
The Five learning in moments are
1) More Can Happen than just an impression.
2) Not All moments are crated equal.
3) Respect the user and magic will happen
4) Behavior defines rewards; rewards do not define behavior.
5) There is scale, but not in reach and Frequency.
Keith Ferrazzi
A simple rule of relationship in our society is that they think they do not want to have one with you. Instead, relationship links with generosity. We start to grow our relationship from the age of 3. As we get older, the world will show less relational. In order to be related, we need to be care, bonded and generous. We need care for each others’ success.
Great brand starts when they are vulnerable because that is when you reach out and create value for others. We can accelerate relationship by prepare (Research people), proactive (Mindsets) and follow up (Generosity). We need to lead with generosity, intimacy, candor, and accountability.
“Never be afraid to ask, the worst anyone can every say is NO”
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