Garage Entrepreneurs

We’ve assembled some top tips for young entrepreneurs from a few of our dedicated members. We asked them: What would be your best advice for a young, passionate entrepreneur or would-be entrepreneur? Joe Ornato – Founder, Ornato Group Create a backstage process.  Write down all the steps that it will take to give your customer the ultimate experience.  Natural sales people tend to “do” what they “know” intuitively, without getting into a well-defined process.  Building a process allows for: consistency, duplication, […] Continue Reading Best Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs experience failure an average of 3.2 times before finally being successful. From working with many entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, I believe a major factor in not being successful the first time is not truly knowing yourself. Every year I update a personal inventory as part of my overall personal strategic plan. This strategic plan is separate from the strategic plan for my business. Having an updated personal inventory is helpful when I need to make tough decisions as an entrepreneur. […] Continue Reading Three Self Assessments for Young Entrepreneurs

The absolute best way to find a good idea is to look for a good idea. As an EIT (Entrepreneur-in-Training), you need to realize that a great business idea will never just ‘fall into your lap’.  In my experience, and from speaking to successful young entrepreneurs, you must actively partake in an ideation process. There are many places that you can look for a good idea, but some of my favorites have been included in a past post that I wrote on Entrepreneurial […] Continue Reading Young Entrepreneurs: To Find a Good Idea, LOOK For One!

If you’re a business student (or a future business student), you’re no doubt familiar with the 4 P’s of Marketing: Price, Product, Placement and Promotion. I’d like to talk about the 4 P’s of Entrepreneurship: Passion, Persuasiveness, Patience and Pain Threshold. Passion: One common characteristic about all entrepreneurs is that they’re passionate about what they’re doing. If you’re a young entrepreneur starting (or thinking about starting) a new business, you need to be able to live it, breathe it, eat it […] Continue Reading The 4 P’s of Entrepreneurship

I recently had a chance to interview entrepreneur and Canadian native, Ben Yoskovitz, Co-Founder of Standout Jobs and the man behind ‘Instigator Blog’. Ben has been an entrepreneur for 12+ years in the Web space, working extensively in web and software development. I had a chance to ask Ben a few questions about his experiences as an entrepreneur. Eric: How did you start out as an entrepreneur? Ben: I started my first company in 1996 while I was still at McGill University. […] Continue Reading Interview with Co-Founder of Standout Jobs, Ben Yoskovitz

I started working on my first business when I was 18 years old. I have certainly learned some valuable lessons since then through my experiences and I am still learning. There have been many ups and downs but deciding to create my own job and become an entrepreneur is one of the most rewarding decisions I’ve ever made. If I could go back in time and give some advice to myself when I was starting my first business, these are the […] Continue Reading 10 Lessons I Learned from My First Startup

As an entrepreneur, or EIT (entrepreneur-in-training) do you sometimes find it difficult to stay on track? If you don’t set limits on your time, you’ll quickly become overwhelmed.  I’ve come up with a technique that helps me stay on track, it’s called “Buckets”. About every four months I come up with a list of buckets that are most important to me.  This list is short and sweet – and currently consists of five buckets: 1) Spending time with family/friends. 2) Physical fitness. 3) […] Continue Reading Entrepreneurial Buckets

I remember my 3rd year Business Ethics course beginning with the professor saying, “I know most of you think this is a stupid course because you Gen-Yers grew up hearing about the unethical practices of companies like Enron and you don’t think you could possibly learn to make ethical decisions.” It wasn’t my favourite course but it sure was interesting. The theory of business ethics seemed like a distant cousin of ethical business in practice. When I think of ethical companies […] Continue Reading Developing a Code of Ethics for Your Business

In an early-stage, cash-strapped startup, entrepreneurs are constantly looking for opportunities to keep their business afloat. Maybe your core business isn’t generating revenue right now, and you need to do other things to offset your short-term losses. In a previous post on scope creep we mentioned not differing from your core business too much, but it is sometimes inevitable. Perhaps there is a family friend who needs some consulting work done, or a friend offering you a cut of every deal […] Continue Reading Tempt, Fall, Recover

When I was a second-year student at the University of Western Ontario, I and four other individuals completed a for-credit project where we had to come up with a full business plan, complete with executive summary, projected statements, a five-year plan…the works. The idea was great. We put a ton of work into it over the year, had a great working relationship with key individuals who could provide us with the resources to bring this plan to fruition. From day one, […] Continue Reading I Love Young Entrepreneurs