Walking Through Doors In Search of a Better Future

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Walking Through Doors In Search of a Better Future

Business plans are the organizational backbone of a business, but not all businesses are planned. Sometimes, they form out of doing favors for friends. Kelly Wilson of Weave Gotcha Covered spent six months doing sewing work for friends before she realized she had a business.

Soon after that, Wilson enrolled in both FastTrac New Venture and FastTrac Growth Venture. Wilson said she had never owned a business before, so enrolling in these FastTrac programs got her excited to learn everything she could about starting a business.

“I can remember the very first day when I walked in,” Wilson said. “They said, ‘What is your exit plan?’ I had no idea what they meant. That has been a huge guiding force for us over the years because we now know what our exit plan is, so everything we do is aimed that way. Every other piece of the curriculum had equal importance, just in different ways.”

Wilson said she always tells people if a door opens, don’t ask questions; just walk through it. One day, while working at a local fabric store, a client walked in looking for new draperies. This client worked for a large local retailer, but the person who made their draperies smoked while doing so.

“I had just received my brand new box of business cards at lunch that day,” she said. “I’d gone home and I had them, and I brought them back to work. I walked back to my locker and I got the box, and I handed them to her. I said, ‘Here, I’d be happy to do your work for you.’”

That client became Wilson’s and her co-founder Lonnie Vanderslice’s strategical partner.

Weave Gotcha Covered, which provides custom window treatments, beddings and pillows, has been in business for 10 years, but it took some major knocking down of barriers to get where they are now. As a stay-at-home mom for 17 years, Wilson said she had only ever waited tables. Her side job of doing sewing work for people really was a necessity. Wilson said her family lost their home and everything they had from the first wave of fallout from 9/11. Rebuilding herself became critical, not just from an income standpoint, but from a personal one as well, between taking care of her family and working to provide for them.

Wilson said all of that is right below the surface of her daily work at her business. But in 2013, the business became an opportunity to help women struggling with similar issues Wilson herself went through.

The initial idea for Weave Gotcha Covered came out of a necessity for an income when she and her co-founder needed a way to make extra money. When they got to their hiring stage, which consisted mostly of women, they realized they had one thing in common with the women they were hiring – everyone was in need of nontraditional employment opportunities. The focus then turned to building a social enterprise.

“It gave [the business] an identity and it allowed us to start connecting with others that also do social work to solve society’s problems through business, and has given us more opportunities and paths to complete that work,” Wilson said.

After partnering with a local business woman who shared their mission, Weave Gotcha Covered moved from North Kansas City to the city’s urban core, closer to their employee base. This allowed the women they were hiring – individuals facing challenges such as children with disabilities or women reentering society, to name a few – a shorter commute to work.

“Everything else will take care of itself, but how do you make your community better?”

Wilson said they are always trying to figure out the barrier that is keeping somebody from getting a job. But identifying the problem is only the first step. If they are willing to hire people without the means to make it to work, they must provide a solution. For example, in the case of not having a car, Wilson said every employee’s phone has the Uber application so they have the ability for transportation.

“We have flexible schedules because people are working around all different kinds of challenges to balance life,” Wilson said. “While they can’t just come and go as they please, they do have complete flexibility in the schedule they have set.”

To create a social enterprise, Wilson said one must resonate with the idea behind Ewing Marion Kauffman’s philosophy of giving back to the community. Outside the work she does with her own business, Wilson is also active in the community, sharing with people how they too might create a social enterprise.

Wilson said if she can plant that idea upfront, entrepreneurs can keep that in mind as they’re working to start their own business.

“People look at me and say, “Why would you do that?,’” Wilson said. “At the end of the day, it’s not about how much money I can make. As a business owner, I have responsibility, I believe, to my community to provide jobs, to provide answers where I can. That’s what Mr. K was all about. How can you make your community better? Everything else will take care of itself, but how do you make your community better?”

Entrepreneurs Share Nuggets of Wisdom From FastTrac

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Entrepreneurs Share Nuggets of Wisdom From FastTrac

At some point, budding entrepreneurs realize how much they need to learn. All the confidence and determination in the world won’t make up for a lack of knowledge.

Fortunately, there’s FastTrac.

The FastTrac curriculum combines educational content, interactive exercises and exposure to an impressive roster of subject-matter experts. Along with gaining the financial acumen and technical know-how to turn your entrepreneurial dream into a reality, you’ll tap a vast network of peers, mentors, and guest speakers.

What you value most about FastTrac will vary based on your needs and your stage of business building. Some FastTrac graduates benefit most from the skills and tactics they develop, from writing a business plan to identifying a market niche to setting financial, production or sales goals. Others say the highlight is forging relationships that open their eyes to fresh perspectives.

For Rob Drummond, FastTrac’s value takes many forms. He graduated FastTrac in 2003 before launching a management advisory firm.

“Entrepreneurs often underestimate the funds they’ll need,” said Drummond, now a certified FastTrac facilitator in Morgantown, Pa. “You have to figure out how to model the business and avoid undercapitalization. FastTrac has a module on getting different types of funders and showing them how you’ll repay them under various scenarios.”

Aspiring entrepreneurs often formulate an idea for a business without detailing how it will take shape or what actions they should take to move ahead. They may need guidance to advance from concept to launch.

When Sarah Schumacher took FastTrac NewVenture in 2011, she had already spent two years freelancing as a graphic designer and print broker. What began as requests from friends for wedding invitations and business cards turned into a full-time business.

“I never thought about what I liked doing most,” said Schumacher, founder of Cyclone Press in Kansas City, Mo. “FastTrac helped me figure out my target market: branding and consulting to help small businesses grow. If you’re serious about starting a business, FastTrac NewVenture is the best way to begin.”

By 2017, the demands of her growing business led her back to FastTrac. Some of the best takeaways from that GrowthVenture program came from guest speakers.

An operational expert distributed case studies of how founders of early-stage companies improved their internal efficiency. Schumacher continues to review the handouts, which include a workflow diagram consisting of flow charts that help avoid bottlenecks.

Another speaker, a strategic planning specialist, provided tips to boost productivity. Schumacher has applied what she learned by prioritizing her time and differentiating between the urgent and the important.

“Both speakers were FastTrac graduates who gave me tools that I use with my clients,” she said.

In some cases, a comment made in FastTrac can have a lasting impact. Many FastTrac graduates cite advice such as, “Work on the business, not in the business” as an ongoing source of wisdom.

Mike Mikeworth, a certified FastTrac facilitator in Abilene, Tex., says a particularly valuable tool is the business model canvas, a visual aid that guides entrepreneurs to refine their business model.

“It’s a grid where you answer lots of questions based on different building blocks,” he said. “It’s free with online FastTrac and it’s a popular resource.”

Another element of FastTrac that resonates with participants involves the drafting of policies and procedures that accelerate a young company’s growth. Many entrepreneurs start by doing everything themselves, and they eventually hire their first employee to lighten their load. With written policies in place, newcomers can hit the ground running with clearly defined rules, protocols and processes.

Mikeworth recalls a FastTrac graduate—the founder of a meat processing company—who benefited from documenting workflow procedures and standardizing job roles and responsibilities. Having a comprehensive set of easy-to-understand policies has allowed the founder to step away from the day-to-day business operation to engage in long-term planning.

“Because FastTrac helped her refine her company’s policies and procedures, she can give thought to her exit strategy,” Mikeworth said. “Now that she has applied what she learned and has these policies in place, she knows that she can sell the business and it won’t die afterward.”

Two-Step Process to Review and Negotiate Contracts

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Two-Step Process to Review and Negotiate Contracts

If you want to become a successful entrepreneur, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of reviewing and negotiating contracts. Sure, you can (and should) rely on contract lawyers to help you, but you also want to have a good understanding yourself.

In this post we’ll walk you through both steps: Reviewing a Contract & Negotiating a Contract.

HOW TO REVIEW A CONTRACT

The first thing to consider when you review a contract is what the deal should look like based on your prior conversations with the other party. If you don’t have a good understanding of the deal itself, then you won’t know what to look for in the contract.

Accordingly, you might sketch out a bullet point list of the key deal terms as you understand them. Then, skim the contract to make sure the overall deal is presented correctly.

From there, you can consider using these tips to help you narrow in on the specifics:

  • Review the contract’s actions sections. These are the sections that should explicitly state what each party is obligated to do. For example, how much is being paid (and when are those payments due) and what is the other party doing (developing a website, painting a house, etc.).
  • Read the rest of the contract. Although boring, this is important. You need to review all of the other sections to make sure you are not agreeing to something hidden in the terms. You’ll find that most formal contracts include various provisions that are “standard” and require each party to do certain things, promise other things are true, while refrain from doing other things.
  • Consider if other terms are missing. After reading everything, refer back to your bullet list to see if anything is missing. Additionally, after you understand all the provisions you can then think through various what-if scenarios to see if anything else is missing.

HOW TO NEGOTIATE A CONTRACT

Many people struggle with negotiations; however, it doesn’t have to be hard or adversarial. Rather, many negotiations can be friendly and in most cases your negotiation will lead to a better deal and long-term relationship.

  • First, ask questions. If you are confused about something in the contract or if you don’t understand why the other side included a particular provision, just ask the other side about it. Often, a simple conversation can clear up a misunderstanding and sometimes the other party will insert a provision by mistake.
  • Understand your position. Sometimes you can negotiate a lot, especially when you and the other side are comparable in size/power. However, if you are negotiating with a huge corporation, you may not have much power to change things.
  • Be reasonable. Often, signing a contract is just the starting point to your relationship. And if you are hard to work with during the contract negotiation stage, the other side may not even want to continue working with you.
  • Be assertive. Subject to the above (be reasonable), always stand up for yourself. You should never sign a contract if its terms place too much of a burden on you or if it subjects you to too much risk.
  • Make changes. Assuming you have the power to make changes, you should always do so if it can help you. If your changes are really simple, you might just communicate them in an email or conversation with the other side and ask them to make them. However, if they are not simple, you should consider using a redline tool such as Microsoft Office’s redlining function.
  • Keep their language where possible. Although you should always redline a contract when needed, you should usually try to use the original language whenever possible. Although you may prefer your language, you should only delete entire sections and replace them with your preferred language if there is a substantive reason to do so.

LEARN MORE

 You’ll encounter a lot of contracts along your path to starting a new business and growing it into something larger than just you. But the more you understand about business in general, the better you’ll be at reviewing and negotiating contracts. If you’d like to learn more about starting a business, you should enroll in the Kauffman Foundation’s FastTrac program at www.fasttrac.org

CONTRIBUTOR: Chris Brown, Founder and Attorney, Venture Legal

Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Why They Matter and How to Build Them

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Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: Why They Matter and How to Build Them

Do you realize your true potential as an entrepreneur?

Sure, you’re starting and running a business — and that’s no easy feat.

But as an entrepreneur, you’re also in a position to make big things happen in your community, whether for other entrepreneurs or the people that live in and visit the place you call home.

To realize the most significant change (and impact), you need an ecosystem of similarly focused people who can help get things done.  And that’s why conferences like the annual Mayors Conference on Entrepreneurship are so important.

Before we tell you a little more about the Mayors Conference, let’s first take a look at what sort of change you can make.

HOW ENTREPRENEURS CAN HELP THEIR COMMUNITIES

There are two key ways that you, as an entrepreneur, can have a lasting impact on your community.

Make it easier for other entrepreneurs to get started: What does the entrepreneurial landscape look like in your city? Is it flourishing? Or is there an opportunity to make entrepreneurship more widespread and help more people realize their dreams of being a business owner?

Thinking about entrepreneurship on a larger scale can be intimidating. But take a step back and look at your own journey. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur? What resources or people did you find helpful? Where did you get stuck? Your firsthand experience is incredibly valuable when it comes to identifying both opportunities and areas for improvement.

Let’s say, for example, you decided to launch a retail business and you wanted a brick-and-mortar location. How easy was it to find and purchase the space? What sort of permits, licenses or other applicable documentation did you need from the city? Was this a fairly simple process to navigate, or was it wrought with complexities?

That’s the sort of thinking that will help expand entrepreneurship in your community. And if you do identify possible challenges at the municipal level, those can be a prime starting point. To explore options for overcoming challenges — such as making the permitting or licensing process more transparent and easier to follow — you’d want to talk to people in those departments, plus get feedback from other entrepreneurs. That’s how you start building an ecosystem. Then, with that information — and the skills and roles represented in the ecosystem — you can start to formulate an action plan.

Solve pervasive problems in your community: Entrepreneurs are becoming an increasingly valuable resource when it comes to problem-solving. After all, who better than entrepreneurs to efficiently solve problems? That’s Entrepreneurship 101!

In our hometown of Kansas City, we’re seeing innovative technology startups and improved data analysis focused around long-running problems that include community health services, graffiti tracking and removal, and pothole prediction. The City of Kansas City just weeks ago issued an RFP for a Comprehensive Smart City Partnership that’s focused on improving delivery of basic city services, digital access and resident health.

This is another example of a situation in which an ecosystem-based approach can be valuable and effective. Rather than isolating a discussion of a problem and possible solutions within one municipal department or among a group of concerned citizens, an ecosystem includes these voices and others. There’s more expertise to be tapped, more perspectives to be considered, and an increased likelihood that a tangible, effective solution will emerge. That solution doesn’t always need to be created by an entrepreneur, but there’s no doubt that entrepreneurs can be key members of an ecosystem.

That, of course, begs the question: how do you build such an ecosystem?

WHERE ECOSYSTEM BUILDING HAPPENS

Think of the range of people that conferences bring together: different roles, different skills, different geography, different perspectives. That’s why conferences are an especially popular starting point for ecosystem building, including the upcoming Mayors Conference on Entrepreneurship.

The Kauffman Foundation started this annual conference in 2013 to bring mayors, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship experts together to discuss ways to promote startup activity and encourage higher levels of entrepreneurship in their cities.

Over the years, the immense amount of knowledge shared at these conferences has helped build an invaluable resource: the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building Playbook. The work that made this playbook possible also validated the importance of ecosystems and how they can impact a city’s long-term growth and economic success.

“These conversations reaffirmed our commitment to advancing entrepreneurial ecosystems as a model for economic development,” according to the playbook’s preface. “That model focuses on how the whole of a community is far greater than the sum of its parts. It means starting with what a community has and connecting the pieces. More than ever, we believe ecosystem building can transform communities of varying sizes, demographic and socioeconomic contexts, and geographies, and create more sustainable economies everywhere.”

Attending a conference like the Mayors Conference on Entrepreneurship is an incredible opportunity to not only understand ecosystems, but also become part of one. If you can’t attend, don’t fret. Explore resources like our playbook, then keep your eyes peeled for other conferences or opportunities that can help you lead the way when it comes to your own community’s ecosystem building.

You may not have realized that, as an entrepreneur, you’re uniquely positioned to not only take charge of your future, but also help determine what’s ahead for your city and neighbors. It’s a hefty responsibility, but also the opportunity of a lifetime. You dreamed big for your own business and made it happen. Now, it’s time to do the same for the place you call home.

Find Your Entrepreneurial Community at the ESHIP Summit

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Find Your Entrepreneurial Community at the ESHIP Summit

Although entrepreneurial business growth hasn’t yet reached the explosive levels experienced during the 1980s and 1990s, it’s been on the rise in recent years. More good news? The rate of startup growth increased to 75.6 percent in 2017, which means startups are growing faster in their first five years than they did in the past, according to the 2017 Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship.

Yet despite that continued growth, being an enterpreneur can be isolating — even, at times, downright lonely. That’s why it’s so important for entrepreneurs to find their community. And there’s no better place to do it than at this year’s ESHIP Summit.

A QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE ESHIP SUMMIT

The ESHIP Summit, which launched in 2017, is a three-year initiative that’s “designed to bring together builders of entrepreneurial ecosystems. That way, we can collaboratively create tools, resources and knowledge to better support communities that empower makers, doers and dreamers,” according to the event website.

This sort of community-building — much like entrepreneurship itself — is an ongoing process. Yet the initiative culminates each year around the summit, an immersive, three-day event that gives attendees invaluable opportunities to explore, share and, most importantly, connect.

This year’s summit is particularly exciting because it’s the second one. During the 2017 ESHIP Summit, we kicked off a phase of discovery that included the identification of seven key insights.

In a matter of days, the 2018 ESHIP Summit will build on that foundation of discovery and begin a new phase: design. The plan: to “collectively deveop and test sustainable and scalable solutions to the most important needs in our ecosystems and across the ecosystem-building field.”

The importance of the work that happens during the ESHIP Summit can’t be understated. Yet the ability for entrepreneurs to attend events like these to find and build their communities is just as important, both for short- and long-term success.

WHY COMMUNITY MATTERS TO ENTREPRENEURS?

As an entrepreneur, you can look at community two ways. There’s your community or network — the people who support you, motivate you and provide invaluable help like referrals and feedback.

Then there’s the local entrepreneurship community. It’s more vibrant in some cities than others. Take the Kauffman Foundation’s home base of Kansas City, for example. The city (and larger metro area) is home to a thriving entrepreneurial community that’s fueled by technology-driven initiatives like the first municipal installation of Google Fiber.

As a result of that community, entrepreneurs have access to an incredible array of resources including programming like 1 Million Cups, financial assistance through grant programs like Launch KC, and general knowledge and tools produced by the Kauffman Foundation, including free online classes to help entrepreneurs start their businesses.

You see, an entrepreneurial community is about so much more than networking and building those personal connections. Don’t get us wrong — those are invaluable. But it’s equally important to do what you can to foster entrepreneurship in your community. Not only will that attract more entrepreneurs; it will also give those entrepreneurs more tools, more support and more leverage to ensure they have what they need to succeed.

Here’s a quick homework assignment. Do a quick Google search to see what entrepreneurial resources are available in your area and see if you can get a handle on what sort of entrepreneurial community exists. Then, keep an eye out for opportunities to improve that community. Even if you can’t attend this year’s ESHIP Summit, you can still be a part of the community-building process. One easy way is to sign up for the ESHIP Summit newsletter so you can be in the loop.

They say there’s “strength in numbers,” and that’s never more true than with entrepreneurs. If entrepreneurs can individually launch businesses, just imagine what we can accomplish when we’re all working together.