The Entrepreneurs Handbook

admin on 11 16, 2009

Do you want to learn how to create significant value for yourself and your family in a business that you own and control-value that can provide you the freedom and security to realize your lifetime goals?

Then join myself Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Founder of the Ottawa Senators, Executive Director of Not-For-Profit, Exploriem.org, Broker, Partners Advantage GMAC Real Estate and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, to learn how to ‘Bootstrap Yourself to Success in the 21st Century’ with the Entrepreneurs Handbook.

What is the number one reason people decide to become entrepreneurs?

A) To make more money?

B) To be their own boss?

C) Because they can’t get any other type of work?

D) To work fewer hours or have greater flexibility in their schedule?

E) Because they believe they can create more interesting work for
themselves than others can create for them? Most often, the answer turns out to be E).

Entrepreneurs believe in themselves; they have confidence that they can create great new products and services and, in the process, create new enterprises that will outlast them. They are driven to put their
creative energies to optimal use.

Being a successful entrepreneur allows them to exercise greater control over their own destiny: both professional and financial. Many people think that having a JOB is more secure but entrepreneurs and 2 intrapreneurs think that real security comes from the skills, knowledge, training, creativity and
experience you possess and they know that you can be laid off from any JOB at any time.

Entrepreneurialist Culture is not just relevant to business and engineering students and graduates contemplating starting their own businesses. It is just as relevant to people who intend to seek employment within large companies or, indeed, are going to enter public service or, work with NGOs
(Non Governmental Organizations), charities, museums, hospitals, universities, public school administration and the like. These people are called intrapreneurs. Great organizations in any field need
creative, determined “heroes”: self-starters and independent-minded intrapreneurs who think outside the
box, who have the courage to pioneer new ways of doing things and start new things. These intrapreneurs are the people who get their new projects green-lighted and they get promoted too. Artists, architects,
writers, musicians and other creative persons are also entrepreneurs and they can benefit from studying entrepreneurship so that ‘death isn’t a career move’ for them; that is, they can learn how to ‘get rich while
they’re still alive’.

Reading the Entrepreneurs Handbook you will Learn How To:
-Select the right idea for your next startup;
-Create business models for the 21st Century that produce great results: so that the harder you work, the
more money you make;
-Add differentiated value and ‘pixie dust’ to your business model;
-Create a compelling value proposition and learn how to clearly demonstrate it to customers and clients.
-Self-capitalize (bootstrap) the new enterprise so that you end up owning it and not a VC firm or other
investors or partners;
-Use smart marketing (guerrilla marketing) so you can acquire customers and clients cost effectively;
-Mass customize products and services using the Internet so that, for the first time in history, you can get
custom outputs from standard inputs;
-Reverse out some of the work to your clients, customers and suppliers using the Internet so that you
create a scalable enterprise that can produce more value than if you had a JOB;
-Find pre-launch and launch customers and sell, sell, sell;
-Execute expertly;
-Innovate and improve constantly;
-Make your own rules;
-Learn how to use negative cost marketing and co-branding to deliver your message and capture
customers by ‘intricating’ them in the process.
-Exercise leadership;
-Use social marketing-a new form of reaching world markets effectively and inexpensively, using the
blogoshere, social networking, news agglomeration sites and other new Internet tools.
-Compete effectively with hard charging entrepreneurs from China, India and other Tigers by having a business model that can not be easily duplicated or dislodged and gives you a lasting, sustainablecompetitive advantage and concession or franchise.

Remember: “An Entrepreneur is someone who would rather ask for forgiveness than beg for permission,”
Anon.