Lazy Man and Money

Keeping Yourself Motivated as a Startup Owner

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[Typically, I don’t do like to do back-to-back guest posts here, but I couldn’t resist the topic given my own Money Start-Up… and I need all the motivation I can get. The following is a guest post by James Stevenson.]

Starting a business provides many opportunities but the process is also going to be difficult. At times, you will find it almost impossible to keep yourself motivated and to stay positive. Startups require a lot of time and effort. The results will become evident after a certain period of time. Follow these simple steps to keep yourself motivated from day one until you start accomplishing your goals.

Obstacles are there to be Overcome

As clichéd as it sounds, each obstacle should be seen as an opportunity. Things will never go according to plan. Expecting a certain course of development is only going to get you disappointed.

Remain flexible and think about the best way to deal with the specific situation. It may come out better than what you had initially planned. Use your creativity and business talent to find the best solution for every problem. The more committed you are to making it happen; the easier it will become to overcome the obstacles.

Solid Financial Planning will Make It Easier

Solid financial planning will facilitate the task of getting started because many startup owners worry about the monetary side of the project.

Come up with a good business plan for the first few years of your company’s existence. Try to be realistic in your estimates and expectations. Knowing how much money you will need will give you the motivation to find an investor or the best funding option.

Talk to professionals to make your financial plan adequate and representative of your startup needs. Visit a forensic accountant’s website to get more information. Forensic accountants will help you with the calculations and they will also make it easier for you to stay away from scams. You will also get to discuss taxation issues and tax investigations. Being prepared for the worst-case scenario will take the stress out of the equation and help you perform better as a manager.

Choose the Right Business Partners and Employees

Surrounding yourself with positive, knowledgeable individuals will help you stay motivated and keep going.

Many startup owners give up precisely because they lack the right kind of support structure. Get someone you trust involved in the project. Sharing responsibilities and hearing words of encouragement will really give you the strength needed to continue.

Be very careful when it comes to hiring employees. Choose knowledgeable people that have experience, even if you have to pay higher salaries. The investment in human resources will pay itself off very soon.

Set Achievable Goals

Coming up with one major goal is going to make the task very challenging. Instead, divide each phase into small, achievable goals.

Smaller goals are easier to accomplish. At the same time, knowing that you managed to do it will make you feel good about yourself and about your startup. Small goals will soon accumulate to something bigger.

Your business plan should be divided into achievable steps. The smaller they are, the easier it will be for you to get there and to enjoy the results.

Find an Emotional Outlet

Find the right kind of emotional outlet. Otherwise, you risk becoming the victim of stress and the medical conditions related to it. Being a startup owner is exceptionally stressful because all of the responsibility falls on your shoulders. Try to find something that will help you relax and forget about your business worries.

Fitness or an aerobics class will be great emotional outlets. Physical activity takes out the negative emotions and helps you overcome stress. Spending quality time with your family is another great way to unwind from the day at the office.

Your home should be a place of peace, comfort and relaxation. Leave the business worries at the office door. Thinking about your startup all the time is only going to decrease your productivity.

Allow Yourself to Celebrate Small Achievements

The celebration of successes is an important part of keeping yourself and your employees motivated. Many startup owners are so dedicated to moving forward that they forget to slow down and enjoy the current moment. Corporate victories are really sweet, especially in the start. Take the time to pat yourself on the shoulder.

Organize small parties, even if your company has achieved a really minor victory. Rewarding yourself makes you feel good about everything that you have accomplished on your own. You deserve to celebrate victories, even if everybody else considers them insignificant.

There is nothing more challenging than starting your own business. Everything is at stake and the level of stress is tremendous. To be active and productive, however, you need to discover the best ways of keeping yourself motivated. Motivation depends on your goals, your planning and the everyday business processes. There is nothing wrong with slowing down every now and then and finding an emotional outlet. Take care of your emotional health and you will increase the chances of startup success.

Why the Google Admob Acquisition is Important to Me

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Earlier this week Google made a $750 Million purchase of Admob a company specializing in mobile advertising. It surprised the market in two ways. It was Google’s 3rd largest acquisition (behind DoubleClick and YouTube) ever. The mobile advertising industry is fairly small at this time. However, Google is moving into mobile in a variety of ways. It has a mobile operating system (Google Android), mapping/GPS applications (Google Maps/ Latitude), phone applications (Google Voice), and I’m sure a few thing that I’ve missed.

So what does this have to do with me? I have worked for two mobile phone start-up companies in the past. When it was time to move on from them, I had to decide whether to buy my stock options or surrender them. This is often a difficult decision with a start-up company. If the company goes out of business, you get nothing. If it becomes successful, you can make a great deal on your investment. Complicating matters, it’s very difficult to sell private stock. There are a lot of rules like having to offer it back to the company before you can sell it to others. After much thought on my first company, I made a very risky investment and put around $2000 into buying the stock of the company. Roughly one year later, I found myself in similar position when I left my next mobile phone company. I made the same decision and plunged around $5000 into that stock. That’s a good deal of cash out there.

Fortunately the Google purchase puts me in good position. Google put out Google Facts about Google’s acquisition of AdMob and their chart shows that they now have mobile ads covered in: search ads, web display ads, and application display ads. Google points out a glaring omission, they have no SMS advertising. As fortune would have it, the company that I bought $5000 of private stock is probably the unquestioned leader in SMS advertising. Like Admob, the company is a Silicon Valley company like Google and would easily fill the SMS advertising gap. Probably the only thing holding back Google from buying them at this point is that regulators may hassle them if they went too crazy on the mobile advertising front at one time.

The other company that I worked for does location-based software. If you wanted to know where your friends are or where the nearest Starbucks is, you’d use this software. I worked for this company when I was in Boston. Google doesn’t need this company as much as it’s own Google Maps and Google Latitude does something similar. Also, Boston is not very close to Google’s Mountain View headquarters. If Google was to buy something in that area, they’d probably go with Loopt, a Silicon Valley company that does a similar thing. The only thing that really helps my old Boston-based company is that it is starting to move into location-based advertising. The holy grail of this type of advertising is this: You go to Starbucks’ website and sign up your phone to receive special offers. When you walk by a Starbucks, they might send you an SMS notification that you are eligible for a discount on coffee for the next half hour. If you were on the fence, would a savings of a dollar get you to go in and make a purchase? If it does, it’s a big win for Starbucks’ business. That kind of experience is the thing that a lot of businesses would pay for. And you better believe that Google would love to add that location-based component as a great complement to all it’s mobile advertising models.

I had almost forgotten that I own stock in these companies because it seemed like there would never be an event to make my stock liquid. They’ve gotten a lot more interesting lately though.

Live from Finovate Startup 2009 – Introduction

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Like last year’s Live Blogging from Finovate, I’ll be giving it another shot this year… and by “this year”, I really mean today. For those not familiar with Finovate Startup, it’s a convention of startup companies around banking and finance held in San Francisco.

Finovate Startup has always interested me. Other bloggers have asked me again and again why I’d want to cover it. I think the better question is why I wouldn’t want to cover it. It’s about 20 miles away from where I live. It has relevant personal finance companies presenting. Companies that you may have heard of like Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, Wesabe, Credit Karma, and a whole lot more. Lastly, they provide free food, free drinks, some smaller swag, and for blogger admission is essentially free. The only thing that I don’t like is that you have to wake up at banker’s hours – ugh.

The other thing that I really like about Finovate is the pace. If you snooze, you lose. Since there are over 50 companies presenting, each one is limited to 5 minutes. On top of that, there are booths outside where you can meet and greet all the companies that recently presented. To add to the chaos, over a dozen companies’ PR firms have contacted me asking if I’d like to interview the CEO. As you might imagine there’s very little time to do this. This puts me in the unusual situation of telling the CEO, “No, it’s not going to happen.” To be honest I get a strange pleasure out of this :-).

I’ll also be trying to keep you updated via my Twitter account. This may be less formal… Expect to see comments like: “Company X looks impressive”, “the lunch is pretty good here”, or “I just met Ramit from I Will Teach You To Be Rich.” As you might imagine, the most interesting Tweets are likely to be expected about 45-60 minutes into the open bar.

Arter that I’m off to a dinner sponsored by Thrive. Some other bloggers will be there: The Digerati Life, RateLadder.com, and Stop Buying Crap. Also at dinner will be Prosper – fresh from announcing they are back in business.

It will be an interesting exercise in multi-tasking for me. I’ll have my laptop going without wifi (to save the battery for the whole day), my cellphone to Twitter (battery shouldn’t be a problem), and my notebook for other notes (though I may pass that up and take notes directly with the laptop. I expect the Twitter to fall a little short and the live blogging to be closer to 10 Tweet-sized thoughts on companies grouped together.

I know I’ll be biting a lot, we’ll see how much I can chew.

Lending Club Update

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While I was asleep at the wheel on Friday, Lending Club came through with an update on their quiet period. When we last left them, I declared Lending Club is Dead. I admit that I was going for a sensational headline, but I still maintain that I wasn’t irrational. When a start-up company says that it is A) Unable to take new business, B) Unable to talk about why it can’t new business, and C) Unable to give a time-line for when business with resume, you have to wonder.

On Friday we learned that Lending Club Filed For SEC Registration. I didn’t see a hint of how long something typically waits to get through the SEC, so I’m going to be really conservative and go with a ballpark estimate of 14 years. (Again I’m being ridiculous, but with the last of information, that’s what I’m reduced to.)

I really like Lending Club – my loans are for the most part current. I say “for the most part” because I don’t want to jinx anything. It’s a little like how you don’t mention the no hitter when a pitcher hasn’t given up a hit for the first 7 innings. My portfolio at Lending Club is doing better than it was at Prosper. In fairness I took too much risk with Prosper, so by the time Lending Club came around, I was a good deal smarter about my loans.

Let’s hope that the SEC puts a rush on things to keep the industry moving. Without competition (Loanio, Loanio, come out wherever you are, the P2P lending space has been boring.