Thoughts On Part I of the “PowerPreneur” Series

Last night I attended Part I of the “PowerPreneur” series at the W Hotel Downtown organized by Velvet Suite Marketing along with the Mayor’s Office and Black Enterprise. It was an elegantly designed with successful entrepreneurs as panelists, and high-quality professionals in the audience.

If you recall, I believe I can save black people by exposing our entrepreneurs to the Lean Startup Methodology, and as part of the Customer Development process, attending this event was Step 1 in “Customer Understanding.” And embracing the cynic side of my personality, here are my thoughts (fear not, I sent over my thoughts to the event organizer already):

Different entrepreneurs have different needs. As a full-time for 9 years, my needs are completely different than “wantrepreneurs” (they “want to do it) or newbies (1-3 years). And this event was for them (which is a good thing). For me, the panelists, while chock full of experiences, didn’t go deep enough. They were inspirational, and gave good advice like “follow your passion”, “trust your gut”, and “listen to God.” But I’m not sure anybody left there having learned something new. None of the panelists challenged the audience to think differently. Ironically, the theme for this year’s BE Entrepreneurs Conference is “Re-think Business.”

For example, the panelists were asked “Describe yourself in one word.” My answer would have either been “rebel” or “egotistical.” I say egotistical because that’s what it takes for you to believe that, despite the odds, you will succeed. The fact is that 90% of new businesses/ideas fail. And for us entrepreneurs to think we will won’t fail takes some combination of delusion and ego (and a pinch of “rebeliousness”)

It is this same ego, as Steve Blank says, which also blinds us to fatal flaws in our business models. But no one talks about this. No one talks about having to balance vision with reality (the reality distortion field). No one talks about, if they are being real with themselves, about the abject fear that entrepreneurs have of failing while at the same time having to embrace it.

Christian Ruffin (One Stop Productions/Do Restaurant) did an excellent job of touching on failure leading to success (if you learn from the failure). But let’s take it a step further. If failure leads to success, then “failing” more leads to more success. (Note: the key to failing is to not fail at things you can’t come back from). And, as Lean Startup teaches us, the faster you “fail”, the better.

Think back to all of the hard lessons you’ve learned in your life as a result of failure. What if you had learned them years earlier? How far along in your maturation process would you be? And, this is the kicker, did you actually have to go through those painful times to learn?

Another example, the panelists were asked about their “power moves.” I can’t remember what they said, but what about something like the simplest, yet best, advice ever “make things people want” (via Paul Graham). With our ego (there’s that word again), we entrepreneurs often think everyone will love our idea, and will buy it just like we will.

Newsflash: this only happens if a ton of people have the same problem you do. If not, your idea will flop.

Said another way: create a solution for a problem. In life, people pay (take action) for solutions (products/services) to their problems (needs). It is THAT simple. The larger/wider the problem, the more money you can make.

Ok, time for me to get off the soapbox. But I still haven’t talked about why business plans are useless and how most black-owned businesses are service-based. That’s a topic for another day.

Comments

comments

Powered by Facebook Comments