Sakib Mahmud Aka Visionary Geek

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is a resource and guide for first-time entrepreneurs and startups. The channel is sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark. To sign up for BizSpark, click here.

Although the median age of CEOs is 54, one of the fasted growing demographics of entrepreneurs is young people. According to a survey by JA Worldwide almost three-quarters of high school students indicate an interest in becoming entrepreneurs. Although there are a few college programs dedicated to entrepreneurship, even with the preparation from a college degree program many young entrepreneurs can flounder.

To help remedy this, Under30CEO.com has collected advice from its users and offers “Young Entrepreneur Advice: 100 Things You Must Know!”

Microsoft BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators.

Content Credit goes to Readwriteweb.com

I’m always loving in-dependency and always dreaming to become a successful entrepreneur. So, to become a success need to hard work, have to plan, work and complete the tasks and touch the next plan or update the next plan, managing working cash flow and investing some little amount when earned and using some money for self. However, to running in same way or always busy to thinking that really harmful for the human body and soul — and sometimes you will be frustrated, when success not come to you and sometimes you will be excited when success knocked to you.

I’m just coming from 10 Tips for Saving Your Life From Your Business, Tim Berry who shared some awesome tips for us “Maximizing your chance for success means sacrificing health and family” and as well I’m excited when I’ve read Sacrifice your health for your startup — below I’m sharing the venturebeat’s posts and you really enjoy it.

(Editor’s note: Jason Cohen is an angel investor and the founder of Smart Bear Software. This story originally appeared on his blog.)

The Internet is full of good advice about how to lead a healthy, balanced work/home life.

If you don’t have your health and your family, it generally says, nothing else matters. On your deathbed, will you wish you had worked longer hours or been a better parent? Will you wish you had spent more time Twittering or more time exercising, extending your life by five years?

Compelling thoughts. And yet, in my experience this attitude is not the path to success in small business.

Maximizing your chance for success means sacrificing health and family.

This sounds controversial, but it’s not just me:

• Jeremiah Owyang of Web Strategist: “How do I Keep Up?” This is one of the most common questions I get from folks, or a variant: “Do you sleep?” or “Do you have a family?” I can answer succinctly: “I don’t, in shifts, and yes… I think.” … I’m lucky I fell into my passion. It comes with costs however, I’m out of shape, stressed, I don’t sleep well, and my blood pressure is up.
• Mark Cuban, self-made millionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks on how he acheived success: “I slept on the couch or floor … Because I was living on happy hour food, and the 2 beer cover charge, I was gaining weight like a pig. But I was having fun. … Every night I would read [software manuals], no matter how late. … I remember sitting in that little office till 10pm … I would get so involved with learning that I would forget to eat …
• More from Mark in an interview with YoungMoney Magazine: Question: “Did you have to sacrifice your personal life in order to become a business success?”  Answer: “Sure, ask about five of my former girlfriends that question. I went seven years without a vacation. I didn’t even read a fiction book in that time. I was focused.”

“So what,” you could argue, “just because many successful entrepreneurs are workaholics doesn’t mean that’s the only path to success.”

Indeed, study after study has shown that “working more hours” doesn’t translate into “accomplishing more shit.” If you’re not getting enough sleep, for instance, working extra hours doesn’t make up for your foggy brain.

Also, optimizing how you spend your time can increase productivity several times over — an increase you couldn’t possibly match by working more hours.

Yeah, but here’s the problem.

The “Rule of Closets” is that the amount of crap you own will expand to fill all available closet space. You can create more space by adding shelves and organizers, but then you’ll soon discover you have more stuff.

Well I have a “Rule of Time in Startups”: How much time does a bootstrapped company take? All of it.

Even ten people could hardly keep up with everything you do in small business — creating, consulting, designing, fixing, self-promotion, blogging, networking, bookkeeping, taxes, customer support and cultivation and all those little crappy things like losing an afternoon troubleshooting your fancy outsourced IP phone system that was supposed to let you “work from anywhere.”

One, two, or even three people can’t do everything, so of course it takes all your time. If you’re working a day job while starting something on the side, of course you don’t have time to exercise or play with your kids before bed.

It takes obsession to make a little company go. Forget “passion” — everyone’s favorite word — it’s “obsession.” It’s not just that you love working, it’s that you can’t stop working. You’re putting your entire self on the line — your finances, your career, your ideas.

The obsession is there even when you’re away from the office, having lunch with a friend or reading to your kids. As my wife would frequently point out in the early years of Smart Bear, my “mental and emotional bandwidth” was entirely consumed. You’re physically there, but you’re not really there.

Read those quotes above again and you’ll see not just passion but self-destructive devotion. You don’t put yourself through this meat grinder just because you “like something a lot.”

“If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?”

Exactly.

Of course those life-coaches are still correct: This isn’t a great way to live your entire life. You need to accept that this is going to happen and ask whether it’s OK to incur this penalty right now. For me, I did all this in my 20’s when I had no kids, I had enough savings to risk everything for a while, and I had a wife who had her own business and who therefore understood how much work it took and why I was spacing out over dinner.

Bottom line: Every successful bootstrapper I know puts work before self. (Until financial freedom is achieved.) I did too.

(Curious what Jason’s wife thought about this? Check out her rebuttal.)

Photo by a.drian via Flickr

Via Sacrifice your health for your startup — Entrepreneur Venturebeat

I’m just comping from Neil Patel’s blog and he shared an existing posts. Given below,

I was reading an article on the New York Times blog today that breaks down why all entrepreneurs should write business plans.

Careful academic research on the business start-up process reveals that many entrepreneurs never write a business plan.

These studies also show that writing a business plan helps entrepreneurs in a number of ways, including improving their odds of successfully developing a new product, organizing a company, accessing external capital, obtaining raw materials, generating sales and surviving over time. Regardless of what measure of performance academics have looked at, research shows that writing a business plan has a positive impact.

I am not a fan of writing business plans! I have started a fair amount of companies and have never written a business plan. Now you could say that is the reason why a lot of my businesses failed, but I could make the argument that financially I’ve still came ahead.

Here is why I think you shouldn’t write a business plan:

Business plans ≠ Funding

If you are trying to raise money, you’re probably considering writing a business plan, right? Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t know anyone who has raised money from writing a business plan.

Roughly 30 of my close friends have taken some sort of venture capital or private equity financing. And none of them raised that money by writing a business plan.

Most of them did make a power point presentation and a few even wrote executive summaries, but they didn’t write business plans.

Remember, most investors don’t want to invest in a “plan” they want to invest in a business that is up and running. You don’t have to be making money, but they want to see something more than just a piece of paper.

And if a potential investor happens to request a business plan from you, ask them if they are actually going to take the time to carefully read through it. The chances are, they won’t even skim it.

You can’t predict the future

You can try and plan for the future, but your plan will never account for everything. Things change, so why would you waste your time writing a document that won’t be up-to-date.

Or if you want to take it to the next level, why would you start writing a plan that will never be complete? Your business will constantly evolve and change, and if you want your business plan to stay up-to-date, you’ll constantly have to modify it.

Once you start your company, you’ll soon realize that a lot of decisions will have to be made on the fly and that you are going to have to rely on your intuition. There is no a written document can help you with any of this.

Time is money

According to the U.S. Small Business Administration over 50% of small businesses fail in the first 5 years because of lack of capital and lack of entrepreneurial experience.

As I mentioned above, writing a plan isn’t going to help you get capital. And if you are looking to gain experience, you are better off spending time working on your business than writing a plan.

The biggest reason I never wrote a business plan is that it takes my time away from the business. I am a doer and spending weeks on something that has no proof on impacting the success of my company is a waste of time.

If you have somewhat of an understanding of what you are going to do and where you plan on taking your business, you should spend all of your time acting on it. Writing a plan will just slow you down from succeeding.

The businesses world has changed

For a moment, think about all of the things that have changed in the past year. A lot has changed, right?

And now, take a moment and think about all of the things that have changed in the past ten years. So many things have probably changed that you take a lot of them for granted.

Technology is constantly evolving and the way you go about operating your business isn’t the same as it used to be. But the problem with business plans is that they haven’t evolved with the business world. So why would you spend time on something that is old and out-dated?

Conclusion

If you think having a business plan is going to increase your odds of success, it won’t. There are no stats proving that writing a business plan is going to help you succeed… so do yourself a favor and save your time.

And on a closing note, I would like to leave you with a few words from Steve Rappaport.

Many successful businesses today would not withstand academic scrutiny. A perfect example is the company Red Bull. There are so many holes in the plan without the 20/20 hindsight. I can imagine what would have been the comments — didn’t we do this in the 80’s as “jolt cola” or “entrenched drink competitors will crush you if it ever becomes popular.” I think a plan is good, but serendipity and opening the business up for opportunities can be even better. In other words, diverting from the plan. Red Bull’s initial aim was a drink for long-haul truck drivers.

Do you think it’s worth creating a business plan?

Why Entrepreneurs Shouldn’t Write Business Plans [via quicksprout]

GrowThink.com, “it helps clients develop business plans, raise capital, and launch new products and services. Growthink draws new business and supports existing clients with informative website articles, blogs, and tele-seminars that convey complex venture issues in simple, easy to understand language says inc.com.

Read the rest of this article »