Trivia question for you.  Is the car on the left a Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Suzuki, Chevy, Ford or VW?  Answer, it’s none of those, it’s a Scion.  Don’t feel bad if you didn’t get the right answer either, like you, almost every new car looks the same to me too.

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 Utah International Auto Expo and boy was I disappointed.  With the exception of the hood ornament, just about every car looked like the other. Seriously, how many shades of silver can an industry turn out?

When the Detroit automakers went to congress with their hat in hand, I for one was not surprised.  Did you know that the Big 3 average less than $2,000 profit per vehicle?  That represents less than a 5% margin and I don’t know a lot of companies that can operate long-term on those kinds of margins.  Bloated overhead, a history of producing inferior products and (for me) a lack of imagination are obvious warning signs that the Big 3 have been running over and over for the last 25 years.  Is all lost for Detroit?  I don’t think so, but a return to earlier roots would certainly be appropriate.

The best part of this years car show was the “classic car corral.”  Mustangs, Corvettes, GTO’s and other trophies from Detroit’s glory years were on display.  Looking at these “classics” I found myself wondering what happened to those innovative car designers and what their thoughts would be on the this years Ford Fiesta? How these brilliant minds became replaced by todays cookie cutter designers is a mystery to me that I doubt I will ever understand.

The problem with Detroit and other established businesses is that you can’t fool the public for long.  New Flash: When you belong to a company that prides itself on mediocrity, it shows!  It shows in the design, the packaging and the imagination (or lack thereof.)  We “know” when you don’t care. Don’t believe me?  Take a seat at your local DMV for a heaping bowl of stale mediocrity. Yeah, the DMV really has your best intentions at heart…Now serving number two-four-nine at station twelve…”

The best of the best are always looking for ways to define and then re-design themselves.  Nike, Apple, Coke and McDonalds spend millions of dollars each year refining, designing and expanding their brand.  If you don’t have millions of dollars to spend, try spending just a few minutes of time imagining the possibilities and then make it happen.  At Funding Universe we challenge you to dream, to scheme and to use your imagination to grow and innovate.  For those of you who find that task too daunting, may I suggest taking a test ride in a 2009 Chevy Cobalt. For guys like you, it comes in 17 shades of silver.

Joel Nielsen is a Venture Consultant at Funding Universe.  He can be reached at jnielsen@fundinguniverse.com

To be successful you MUST share the misery!  Yes, you heard it here folks we strongly believe in handing your problems off to everyone else.  Isn’t this the kind of advice that you have been waiting to hear?  Well it’s kinda true actually.

If you have ever worked as a small business owner you are very familiar with the fact that work never starts at 8 and ends at 5.  Owning a small business is a 24 hour comittment which means that we NEVER stop thinking about it.  Over time, this constant focus on profitability and success can take an ugly toll.

The other trait that many small business owners have is a reluctance to lean on outside help.  Afterall, your business becomes like a member of your family and who in their right mind would leave their own baby with a complete stranger?!?  Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is flawed and can lead to burnout, frustration and office rage (for example, it’s a really bad idea to whack your computer monitor. See here for more on that!)

As a Type A personality myself, I often had a “go it alone” mentality that served me well, until graduate school.  It was in my MBA program that I finally had to come to grips with the fact that there weren’t enough hours in the day to micromanage every one and every thing.  It was a hard habit to break but in the end I learned that there are a lot of  talented people who can produce phenominal results if you trust them and more importantly empower them to do it “their” way.

Brock Blake, the CEO of Funding Universe learned this lesson at a much earlier age than I did.  Early this month he sat everyone down and challenged us to elimate costs and improve profitability.  In a matter of hours thousands of dollars were eliminated from our overhead.  New ideas and strategies were put into place and a feeling of ownership was felt up and down the hallways of our office.  Funding Universe is “my” company. No good idea is ever turned down and often, good ideas are tweaked into GREAT ideas.

Again, this leadership style comes with a severe warning.  If you give power to your employees to solve problems, you must do it with the full faith and confidence that they will come through for you.  If you give power and then pull it out from underneath them you will damage credibility forever.  Trust but verify, guide but empower.  If you view each of your employees as problem solvers versus problem causers you will find small business ownership a constant delight!

Joel Nielsen is the Director of Debt Services for Funding Universe.  He can be reached at jnielsen@fundinguniverse.com

Every year, millions of people buy a lottery ticket in California. Millions believe that maybe, just maybe, they’ll get the winning ticket. In other words, millions of chumps spend about $10 for a <1% chance of winning money that most winners squander within a few years of winning.

Sometimes, one very lucky guy or gal is right. Millions are dead wrong. But every one of those lotto players are convinced to at least the amount of about $10 that they’re the exception. Likewise in business, some people say, “I don’t need a business plan.” Others, “I’m not the sales type.” Baloney!

There’s a dangerous habit of thinking that gets people in trouble. I call it “exceptional thinking”.

Exceptional thinking is when you think you are the exception to the rule. When you think that you’re different than every other person who has walked on the face of this earth. Sometimes it comes out as a pessimistic thought (e.g., “I could never do what they do.”), and sometimes as an overly optimistic thought (e.g., “I don’t need to eat lots of fruits and vegetables to stay healthy.”). Either way, it’s bad.

Have you seen those posters with a breath-taking photo of a mountain or a great sports feat bordered in black and inscribed with an inspirational quote? There’s a company called Despair, Inc. that makes posters after those style of motivational posters minus the motivational part. My co-worker dedicated a poster to me that sums up what I’m saying perfectly. Click here to view it.

Yes, we are all born with unique talents and strengths. And, yes, we should focus on our strengths, but that doesn’t mean that we can dictate which side of a statistic we’ll fall on or that common human foibles don’t exist in us. The good news is that also means there’s rare occasion when someone succeeds beyond any level we could reach. Basically what I’m saying is we all play by the exact same rules.

Tiger Woods Isn’t Deity

If I’m writing an article relating to success, I have to include the obligatory Tiger Woods reference. Tiger Woods wasn’t born with a golf club in his hand. He may have started at a young age or have natural talent or be the ideal height or wear special underwear, but whatever the advantage, it wasn’t gifted to just Tiger Woods.

We may not all have equal opportunities, but anyone able to read this blog post has opportunities, and I would aver, enough opportunities to be a really successful entrepreneur.

No one is so special they can’t copy what worked for someone else and get the same result. You can be salesy enough to sell your product. You can take your company public. Just do what other successful people did.

The hopeful truth in that last paragraph leads me to my next, more discouraging point.

The Corollary: You’re Really Not That Unique

People often tell me how they work better by procrastinating and then scrambling right before a deadline. I also hear how some people forget things they write down so they don’t write them down to remember them or how the less they read, the wiser they are. Sure, you have unique strengths, but come on . . .

In our business, the most common is the guy who won’t listen to our business advice but wants us to connect him with our investors anyway, no matter how unprepared he might be. He has the next “multi-zillion dollar idea”, but his business plan consists of a hand-written diagram on a stained piece of paper. We have a business plan review process in place and we provide consulting services to entrepreneurs in his position, but he insists he knows better than we do. It’s tempting to believe him and give him a chance, but every time we have, it’s led to embarrassment on our side and theirs.

It seems that the one thing everybody who’s “different” has in common is an unwillingness to accept the need for change. Instead of acknowledging their deficiency, they insist it’s a special, unalterable endowment. I guess that’s a more comfortable perspective. You can recognize people with this attitude by their mantra: “But I’m different!” If you notice yourself saying that, slap yourself on the spot.

There’s Hope

Luckily, because we’re all uniquely similar, there’s a common principle to success. It’s called humility. It’s so refreshing to talk to an entrepreneur who’s not discouraged by the daunting journey to fundability and yet not over-confident in their ability to shortcut it. If you are humble enough to accept that you might need some help and willing to give it all you’ve got, we can help you. If not, here’s my guess at the lottery. I’m sure it’s as good as any: 4 8 2 9 2 3

Social networks are definitely not just for individuals. You can connect to our company through a variety of mediums to get networking opportunities, fundraising advice and the inside scoop on the going-ons at FundingUniverse.com.

You may have already noticed the social network icons on the top, right-hand side of our blog. If you’re a member of Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, we’d love to connect! Access is open to all. Follow the icons on the top-right or keep reading for more info.

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/FundingUniversecom/36103342879?ref=ts

Network with other entrepreneurs on Facebook and stay tuned for upcoming event notices. FundingUniverse regularly holds online pitching events and in-person events you don’t want to miss out on.

LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=140071

Discuss business ideas, fundraising methodology and connect with FundingUniverse staff and potential partners.

Twitter
http://twitter.com/fundingtips

The FundingUniverse team delivers baked-fresh-daily fundraising advice over the Twitter network in bite-sized portions of 140 characters or less.

My Obsessions
Is it Enough?

The big dirty secret. Clearly, no one wants to talk about this. When we do a sales forecast, no matter how confident we are, we’re usually sensitive enough to our audience to make the picture look pretty reasonable. That also includes the supposedly brilliant fed finance guys who keep mis-forecasting the ongoing U.S economic bailout. However, if we were living in a totally transparent world, guys that do these forecasts (the feds) would pay more attention to whether we have allocated Enough money and get it right the first time. Problem is, investors or in this case, the public, would never agree with it. So forecasters are forced to make their case incrementally, over time, which makes the situation get progressively worse.

This is different from the normal world, where if you have a willing investor, you should make sure to get enough money the first time, since you may not get another trip to the buffet line.

P.S. Newsflash… I just heard I am going to get a billion dollar bailout. Hooray! I didn’t want it, but the government said I had to take it, to help insure the public wouldn’t worry. (Now see how silly that sounds!)

Advice to Entrepreneurs
Accordion to me…This week’s advice to entrepreneurs

Surviving in 2009. Whatever you do, you must last to survive. No matter what your company does, make ‘lasting’ your New Year’s Resolution. Chances are, this year you’ll have less money to achieve your goals than you originally planned. Right now, put pen to paper to figure out HOW you can last. Change your focus from achieving greatness to… surviving long enough to have sufficient opportunity to evolve your plan, so you can ultimately achieve greatness. Confusing? It is for me, and I wrote it.

Another dirty secret. Wherever I go, people are still asking what’s changed with the recent big shift in the economy. Two big phenomena occur to me. First, those investors who still have lots of cash, are now looking for deals at 30% of what they were six months ago. A necessary part of that reduction is to cover the possibility that the economy may continue to take a further dive. Second, with things being so radically impaired, those less well-blessed investors are looking at previous deals with a new goal of return OF investment, not return ON investment. (I’m hoping you understood this the first time you read it.)

As compared to what? Get ready for that question. Your market is big, compared to what? Your product is better, compared to what? Your team has more experience? Now…you get it.

Other ideas to help keep you tense….Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. And, when you ask a question, you better know the answer.

Got an idea or something you need help on? Email me at rick@hotventures.com

It’s 2009! A new year means New Year’s resolutions. People are settling down from the rush of the holidays and starting to think about how to make this year better than any year before. For some that means a smaller waistline, for others it means taking the entrepreneurial plunge; jumping off the corporate ship and braving the waters of capitalism.

We love this time of year because we service the surge of the latter. January brings throngs of people freshly committed to starting their own businesses and racing to find capital. We love the excitement and are glad to see so many dreamy-eyed business people setting out to change the world. We’d also like to offer some advice to eager entrepreneurs on how to avoid becoming one of the SBA’s 98% statistic who fail within the first two years.

Check Your Motives

Why do you want to be in business for yourself? Your answer to that question will help you know on the outset how likely you are to succeed. Starting a business isn’t easy. Sure, it carries the potential of doing what you love but it also carries a lot of risk and can mean doing a lot of things you hate.

Say you’re a graphic designer, for example, and you want to design logos for a living, it might seem logical to start your own logo design business. You register a domain, print some pretty business cards and . . . now what? After about a month of learning about marketing and sales, you land your first client. Six months go by and you’ve got several clients, accounts receivable, several marketing channels to manage and a bunch of other administrative functions you wish you never spent time on.

Or, maybe you’re an inventor/programmer and you just invented a new search algorithm that’ll put Google out of business. You register an LLC with the state and start driving traffic to the Linux box in your basement over your residential DSL line. Everything goes great until your webserver crashes from too many concurrent users and Google’s lawyers send you a letter for your overlooked patent infringement.

OK, maybe the examples are extreme (particularly the latter), but the point is that owning your own business isn’t just about doing the one thing you love. Entrepreneurship involves turning what you love into a duplicable process, and if that doesn’t sound appealing to you, you may be better off working for someone else. But don’t get discouraged, if you’re doing what you love there’s nothing wrong with doing it under someone else’s umbrella.

Expect Lots of Sacrifice

What your mom told you a long time ago is still true: nothing worthwhile is ever free. You definitely can have a successful business. You definitely cannot have a successful business without sacrificing a lot of time, money and energy.

Face the fact upfront that starting a business is hard work. If you have a family, you might need to start scheduling time with them a week in advance. If you have other commitments, scale them back. There are exceptions, but realize at some point you’re going to be asked to give up something you don’t want to in order for your business to thrive.

Embrace Setbacks

Failure is a natural part of the cycle. You’re going to make mistakes, lots of mistakes. You’ll make large, costly mistakes. You’re going to embarrass yourself publicly on more than one occassion. Bad things will happen that will be out of your control. It’s all OK! Learn to love the setbacks.

If you ask ten people if they agree that failure is a good thing, ten people will tell you, “Yeah, ’cause you can learn from it.” Well, if it’s good, then the more often the better, right? Well if you count how often those ten people have failed, you’ll see that some of them aren’t drinking their own tonic.

As long as you’re not making the same mistakes over and over again, failure is a precursor to success. Whether you caused the problem or it was out of your control, there’s always something to learn from every failure so it shouldn’t be avoided, it should be embraced.

Every time something bad happens, you’ll learn a little more. After years and years of failure, people will call you wise and you’ll realize how all the setbacks were worth it.

There you have it, candid advice to keep you afloat. If we haven’t dissuaded you from your goal to be a business owner in 2009, good, ’cause we’re cheering for your success. Here’s to a prosperous 2009. Go to it, newly anointed entrepreneur. The free market is waiting for you! And if you want some help with getting the money to get going, give us a call.