http://iveylocal:8888/index.php/articles/ en ejanssen@ivey.uwo.ca Copyright 2010 2010-07-30T16:55:52+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/floridas_real_estate_woes_a_boon_for_gta_buyer_-_toronto_star/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/floridas_real_estate_woes_a_boon_for_gta_buyer_-_toronto_star/#When:16:55:52Z Ivey Entrepreneur alumni Rahim Madhavji, President and co-founder of Knightsbridge Foreign Exchange in downtown Toronto discusses his new business with the Toronto Star. “Suppose you plan to invest $200,000 in a U.S. property. You call to book a rate, then wire Canadian funds to the firm. It wires back U.S. funds within a day through BMO, with which it has a banking relationship.”ELLEN ROSEMAN David Newman leaves on Friday to spend a week in his new vacation home in Florida. He closed the deal last Dec. 31. While he found it nerve wracking to buy in a state with the highest foreclosure rate for property, he was excited to save a significant amount on foreign exchange when converting Canadian to U.S. dollars. Newman runs a company, Fiscal Agents Financial Services Group, set up in 1977 to help customers find the best rates on term deposits and annuities. It also supplies interest rates to the Toronto Star. “I had a friend who bought a place in Fort Myers for $40,000 (U.S.). I had the glib idea that I’d put my purchase on a credit card,”  he says. His dreams of a $40,000 purchase vanished in a hurry, especially when he started looking on the Atlantic side instead of the Gulf coast,  where Fort Myers is located. He learned that many low-cost properties had been rented out to short-term owners and needed major repairs. That would be hard to do while living in Ontario. After searching for several months, he bought a 2,700-square-foot detached house with three bedrooms in a gated community in Vero Beach for $224,000. “The value was irresistible,” he says, referring to the three tennis courts, pool, clubhouse and location backing onto a lake. Most important, however, was the property’s history. Built in 2007 in a housing boom, it sold initially for $563,000. But as did many Florida homes, it contained defective Chinese drywall, which can cause metal to corrode and lead to rotten egg smells (and possible sinus problems in residents). The first owner couldn’t afford to take out the drywall, leading to foreclosure. Then, another builder did a full remediation and decontaminated the house. “To us, it’s a brand new house,” Newman says. “My son bought a 35-year-old townhouse in Burlington, Ont. and paid more money.” When closing the deal, he used a specialized dealer, Knightsbridge Foreign Exchange in downtown Toronto, that opened its doors last July. “I saved a huge amount, about $3,000 over what the bank quoted for U.S. dollars,” Newman says. “Everything went smooth as a dream.” Rob Wittmann, the CEO of Knightsbridge, is a former managing director of RBC’s foreign exchange sales and trading group. His goal is to provide better-than-bank rates to small and medium-sized businesses and individuals with more than $10,000 to invest. Canada’s big banks have a 95 per cent market share of the foreign exchange market. But high currency margins of up to 2.5 per cent hidden within the FX rate have created a niche for providers with more competitive pricing. You give up some convenience in exchange for better rates, says Knightsbridge president and co-founder Rahim Madhavji. Suppose you plan to invest $200,000 in a U.S. property. You call to book a rate, then wire Canadian funds to the firm. It wires back U.S.  funds within a day through BMO, with which it has a banking relationship. Cameron Roach, author of a guide to buying Florida real estate,  says you’re better off using companies that specialize in the foreign exchange market. They can advise you on how to change large amounts of money and get it down to the U.S. They can also let you lock in a good exchange rate in advance by paying a deposit, say 10 per cent, so you don’t have to tie up all your money until closing the deal. As for Newman, he plans to relax for a few days before starting work on the house – such as replacing the fire and burglar alarms removed during the drywall remediation, so he can get a better deal on home insurance. Ellen Roseman writes about personal finance and consumer issues. You can reach her at eroseman@thestar.ca Ivey Entrepreneurs in the News 2010-07-30T16:55:52+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/ivey_entrepreneur_newsletter_summer_2010/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/ivey_entrepreneur_newsletter_summer_2010/#When:18:07:21Z “Summer is an odd time to be at a university. Although a few courses, including Ivey’s MBA program, run year round, the UWO campus is eerily quiet and empty.” Ivey Entrepreneur - Championing Entrepreneurship in Canada Click the image above for a full PDF copy of the Summer 2010 Newsletter. Institute Buzz By Stewart Thornhill, Executive Director, Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship Although a few courses, including Ivey’s MBA program, run year round, the UWO campus is eerily quiet and empty. The entire institution seems to be taking a deep breath between festive graduation celebrations and frenzied returns to fall class. A sleepy summertime campus brings to mind the metaphor of a duck on a pond, appearing outwardly placid while below the surface the legs are hard at work. Doctoral students use the summer months to advance their research (see the article by Ivey PhD Dominic Lim), while MBA students undertake their fi rst round of electives and HBAs use the summer hiatus to supplement their resumes with internships and travel. Program office staff are finalizing course schedules and securing classrooms for the growing student population. Newly recruited faculty members are welcomed. And we all squeeze a little tighter, as the school continues to grow while we anticipate the opening of the new building a few hundred metres to the west. Within the Entrepreneurship Institute, we use the summer months to review what we’ve done and prepare for the year(s) ahead. Even now, during the somnolent days of summer, new ideas are hatching and opportunities being seized - more is happening than meets the eye. This spring we welcomed Professor Rob Mitchell, who joins Ivey from University of Oklahoma, and Mike Meagher, who taught this past winter, which brings to eight the number of faculty dedicated to teaching Entrepreneurship at Ivey. The growth in faculty and programs over the past few years speaks to the demand for entrepreneurship education as well as the quality of the learning experience students receive from our world-class team. All of which means it’ll be a busy fall. Best to enjoy the quiet of summer while it lasts. Business News 2010-07-20T18:07:21+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/ditching_retirement_to_go_green_-_globe_and_mail/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/ditching_retirement_to_go_green_-_globe_and_mail/#When:15:51:38Z The benefits of being your own boss are plain to see. But why do so many entrepreneurs continue to work well beyond their late 60s when they could be spending their golden years with family and friends? “Because they can,” says Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Richard Ivey School of Business.FRANK ARMSTRONG 69-year-old Ray Dawson plans on spending his summer hefting bulky solar panels up a clanking extension ladder, and then installing them on to a roof near you. A lifelong entrepreneur, Mr. Dawson recently re-mortgaged his home to come out of an eight-year retirement and launch his third business in Sault Ste. Marie, Algoma District Solar Energies Inc. With three family members employed in a business that he expects will soon double in size, Mr. Dawson says he can’t imagine ever retiring or working for someone else. “I’d have to either fall off a roof or have a heart attack,” he says during a break from a contract just west of Sault Ste. Marie. Mr. Dawson is one of about 2.7 million self-employed Canadians, but he’s also of an even rarer breed: that special set of lifelong serial entrepreneurs, driven to self-employment and eagerly on the job long after most of us have retired. While there is little data on Canada’s senior entrepreneurs, data from the U.K. and the U.S. reveals that of those over 65 who are still working, around one-third are self-employed, says Simon C. Parker. Mr.  Parker is the director of the Driving Growth Through Entrepreneurship & Innovation Cross-Enterprise Leadership Research Centre at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario. The benefits of being your own boss are plain to see. But why do so many entrepreneurs continue to work well beyond their late 60s when they could be spending their golden years with family and friends? “Because they can,” says Stewart Thornhill, executive director of the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Richard Ivey School of Business. The serial entrepreneurs Prof. Thornhill adjectives such as “adrenaline”  and “rush” when describing running their own business. “They’ve never felt more engaged and more involved than when they are running their business and they just want to go back for another hit,”  he says. Mr. Dawson doesn’t disagree. The son of a general contractor, he worked with his father, a carpenter,  throughout his youth, before going on to university for a degree in psychology. Between the ages of 35 and 41, he employed nine staff at a government-funded group home he ran that helped young offenders transition back into society. When government funding petered out, Mr.  Dawson returned to contracting and ran his own home renovation business for 20 years. “It’s nice to be my own boss,” he says. “If I didn’t want to work for a customer, I could say I was too busy, and I liked being able to pick the people I worked with.” He retired at the age of 61 only because he was diagnosed with colon cancer and feared he would be unable to fulfill client contracts. Nevertheless, he drove a cab when he wasn’t undergoing chemotherapy—not for the money, but for his own sense of self-worth, he says. After eight years of relative retirement and with his cancer in apparent remission, Mr. Dawson is back in the entrepreneurship game. In March, while he was researching a solar energy system for his own home to reduce his carbon footprint, Enphase Energy invited him to become a distributor and installer of their solar panel systems. He remortgaged his home to buy his own system, the decision made plenty of financial sense for Mr. Dawson. His system cost $55,000 to install,  but he earns $800 per month selling his electricity back to the grid at a rate of more than 80 cents per kilowatt hour. He budgets about $300 of that $800 for his new mortgage, while the remaining $500 is pocket money. Algoma District Solar Energies Inc. has since sold three Enphase Energy systems. Interest in solar power is growing quickly enough that Mr.  Dawson expects to more than double the size of his business in a year or so. He admits that his new business is physically challenging, but he has no plans to slow down. “As long as my health is good and my cancer doesn’t return, I will be installing solar systems because it’s the right thing to do,” he says. The ability to earn a living pursuing one’s passion is the second most popular reason why Canadians become entrepreneurs, according to research done by BizLaunch.ca, Canada’s largest small business training company.  The most popular reason is lifestyle and the third is financial. “It’s the passion, the addiction, the challenge,” says Roger Pierce,  BizLaunch.ca co-founder. “They don’t want to lose that adrenaline rush that can truly only come from creating something from scratch.” People who have already operated successful businesses have a good chance of being successful again because of their experience, says Mr.  Pierce. However, there are risks that don’t necessarily apply to first-time business owners. Repeat entrepreneurs can be exhausted from running a previous enterprise and might not be ready to put up the same fight they did the first time around. Alternatively, overconfidence at their likelihood of success can also be a dangerous mentality for an experienced entrepreneur, Mr.  Pierce says. “Because entrepreneurs get very excited about what they do and they don’t see it as a risk, there’s a tendency to over-invest,” he says.  “Give yourself a play budget.” True to the entrepreneurial spirit, Mr. Dawson of Algoma District Solar Energies Inc. doesn’t feel he’s overextended his finances, despite re-mortgaging his house for 25 years. What concerns him is that he’s his own boss, he’s employing his family,  and he’s helping the environment one rooftop at a time. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/your-business/exit/life-after-work/ditching-retirement-to-go-green/article1636593/ Business News 2010-07-19T15:51:38+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/there_is_a_great_future_for_woman_entrepreneurs_-_businessworld/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/there_is_a_great_future_for_woman_entrepreneurs_-_businessworld/#When:19:47:46Z Carol Stephenson is one of the few women B-school deans around the globe. She has been the dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada since 2003. Stephenson shares Ivey’s India plans with BW Online’s Chetna Mehra and speaks about women in leadership roles and the great future for woman entrepreneurs in Canada and the world. Excerpts.CHETNA MEHRA Carol Stephenson is one of the few women B-school deans around the globe. She has been the dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada since 2003. Not just the academia, she happens to be one among the few most successful women in business as well with more than 30 years of experience in marketing,  operations, strategic planning and financial management. Stephenson has not only been on Canada’s telecommunications Hall of Fame, but on the board of General Motors too, twice (as director and board member). A renowned spokesperson on leadership dynamics and women in leadership positions, Stephenson was designated as one of the 50 Most Powerful Women by YWCA in 2004. She also served as a Member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology for two years. As an Ivey dean Stephenson has been involved in continuously evolving an integrated and robust approach for the curriculum. She was recently in India to sign a MoU with IIM Bangalore under which both the B-Schools will work together to come up with cases based on Indian businesses. The partnership is also expected to go beyond cases and will also include faculty exchange, PhD student exchanges and collaborative research. The second largest producer of cases after Harvard Business school, Richard Ivey already has a case-based partnership with Hyderabad’s Indian School of Business under which both the B-Schools will publish 100 cases in the next three years. Stephenson shares Ivey’s India plans with BW Online’s Chetna Mehra and speaks about women in management and leadership roles. Excerpts. How can we bring in more women into business, entrepreneurship and at leadership positions in the organisations?Probably business education is a good place to start. We work very hard at Richard Ivey to try and encourage women to invest in business education for themselves because it does make a difference in their careers. So, we are open to recruiting the fresh female faculty and students who just graduated and or are working in business. Essentially the discussion is not about the programme and what it’s like to be an Ivey student, it’s more about the plight to be a women in business – the challenges that one handles and how to maintain that work-home balance.  As business leaders we have done a tremendous job of teaching how important business is to the world and how you can make a difference. Often at a very young age, young girls more often think ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to be in business, I want to be a doctor. I want to make something that will make a difference in the world’. And you can make a difference in the world of business because if you are successful in business than the economy is stronger and the quality of life is better for everyone. We sometimes tend to create a picture of businesses as just about making money and the bottom line is about making difference in the world and economy. Our B-School helps women grow their businesses and go to the next level. We have done some executive education which has helped female entrepreneurs to make a quantum shift. There is a great future of woman entrepreneurs.  You have also been a successful business women yourself. What kind of qualities do you think a woman can bring into an organisation and how important is having a woman at the management level in a company?Women are collaborative. They are juggling whole lot of balls at the same time. They are quite willing to ask questions, they are willing to listen. They are quite willing to leaving the apprehensions, thinking about let’s get the job done. I think these are important skills in business world which are quite complex. Those who could motivate people, bring best in the people that can collaborate and can form partnership. And in India, women have done quite well with women CEOs in banking, FMCG industry, etc.  And companies too have a role to play. Some kind of flexible arrangements can be made for a woman. I recall, when I was a CEO I was trying very hard to never have a conference call at 8:00 a.m., which is when you are taking your kids to a day-care or other things. So, being sensitive about such issues is also important. So, at times there are some preconceived ideas about what women will or will not do. But I think now, people are getting sensitive to all these issues now and lot of work is being done on diversity. The companies have also realised now that they cannot afford to not look at the 50 per cent of the talent and that’s the recipe for success. If you are not looking at the 50 per cent of the population to get the best people you are probably not going to achieve the goal. According to a study, women feel they have difficulty in getting their point heard in a B-school?Business schools are also helping the women to overcome the barriers that have been identified. I think faculty members also have a role to play. While discussing a case study they make sure to call on you if you haven’t said anything in last one hour or so. And I wouldn’t say that our female students are laid back in terms of participation. How do you think gender specific leadership can help?At Ivey we address these issues, we talk openly about them. The women in management club talk about their experience with their students. These things can be overcome with open communication. Teaching diversity in the classroom, making males aware of the situation, sensitising them in the classroom discussion can help. What kind of common issues women entrepreneurs generally face across the globe?I think these are more or less the same kind of issues that male entrepreneurs face. In the case of women though sometimes the risk might be a little different. Some of the best women entrepreneurs I have talked to are really not big risk takers. What they do is they figure out how much risk that can be taken without losing the company. So, they may end-up mortgaging their house or something but generally they can’t afford to take big risks because there aren’t any big resources behind them.   http://www.businessworld.in/bw/2010_06_26_There_Is_A_Great_Future_For_Woman_Entrepreneurs.html Lessons for Entrepeneurs 2010-07-18T19:47:46+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/founded_on_passion_-_financial_post/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/founded_on_passion_-_financial_post/#When:22:41:43Z The key to building a successful small business is the same as building a lasting marriage: Careful planning, a flexible strategy for growth and good communication skills are all important, but without a passionate devotion both endeavors are doomed.“One of the first things I talk to my students about is passion and pursuing what they’re passionate about,” said Robert Mitchell,  professor of entrepreneurship at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario.JAMESON BERKOW The key to building a successful small business is the same as building a lasting marriage: Careful planning, a flexible strategy for growth and good communication skills are all important, but without a passionate devotion both endeavors are doomed. “One of the first things I talk to my students about is passion and pursuing what they’re passionate about,” said Robert Mitchell, professor of entrepreneurship at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. “If not, then we often lack the energy to move all the way through the entrepreneurial process.” Linda Lorenz, owner of Can-Parent Inc., has that passion for her business. “I just get so excited when I do what I do,” said Ms. Lorenz in an interview from Sylvan Lake, Alta. In 2001, she started a weekly e-mail newsletter detailing family-friendly events and activities in Calgary, charging subscribers $20 a year for the service. “I have two children and two step-children and half the time you don’t know what you’re doing [with your children] until that morning,” she said. “I want every parent’s life to be easy.” Diagnosed with a rare form of cancer,  Ms. Lorenz took time off to undergo treatment. When she recovered, she decided not to return to her job as a programmer for a computer networking company, opting instead to pursue her passion full-time. “I went back [to the newsletter] and now I’m flying like a maniac,” she said. Since its relaunch last May, CanParent has amassed more than 10,000 subscribers in Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton and Winnipeg. That makes for $200,000 in annual revenue for a company with one employee (two if you count Ms. Lorenz’s 16 year-old daughter) and virtually no overhead. Eight years ago, Joe Drexler lost his job in the trucking industry. No longer able to send his 7-year-old daughter to hockey, he too learned the value of passion in business. “It was either pay the mortgage or hockey, so obviously we did the responsible thing and paid the mortgage,” he said. A local program in Oakville,  Ont., offered to sponsor his daughter for the season, sparking an idea.  “I remember feeling overwhelmed with emotions, feeling very appreciative, and I turned to my wife Christine and said this is what I want to do with my life,” he said. Be The Game Sportswear Inc.  opened in November 2008, selling custom-made sportswear and accessories.  The business gives 8% of its sales to a community fund administered by Mr. Drexler that sponsors underprivileged children in junior league sports. “Nobody does what we do,” he said refering to the charitable aspect of the business. This month, Be The Game began offering free summer sports camps for children whose parents could not afford to send them. Volunteer instructors include NHL stars Nazem Kadri of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ryan O’Marra from the Edmonton Oilers.  Less than two years in, it seems long days and nights spent following his dream have paid off. “Now, I can pay my mortgage, my insurance, heck I even took a four-day holiday a few months ago,” he said. “Where we are today I thought would take until Year 4.” Passion combined with good business practices can lead to profit, although Prof. Mitchell cautions entrepreneurs not to “drink their own Kool-Aid all the time.” He recommends taking an occasional step back to approach tasks with more objective rationality; a lesson Ms. Lorenz has already learned. Soon after relaunching Can-Parent, she started getting requests from customers wanting more specialized content aimed at their children’s age group. Ms. Lorenz promptly began tailoring CanParent’s massive offerings (more than 500 events in Calgary’s first message),  into a breakdown of events by age and genre. “Now if someone emails me saying ‘Linda my kids are aged three to nine so that is all I want’ then that is all they get,” she said. Unlike the vast majority of online event calendars, where businesses must pay to get their events listed, Ms. Lorenz does not accept money from businesses or advertisers. Until now, her business has grown by word of mouth alone. She has shied away from promotion through the media for fear of competition. A common fear among startups, it can be avoided.  Wendy Riel, a partner in the Ottawa office of Fraser, Milner Casgrain LLP and trademark law specialist, suggests the risk posed by potential competitors can be minimized by filing patent and trademark applications right away. “Even if you haven’t yet started using your trademark you can still file an application and obtain protection,” she said.  With most startup budgets are quite low and legal fees quite high, Ms.  Riel said a basic internet search can satisfy the initial steps. The dispassionate passion strategy has done well for both entrepreneurs.  Ms. Lorenz filed a patent application for CanParent last year, is developing an iPhone application and is planning a rapid expansion beyond her four presently-served markets. Her goal is to be national by year’s end, with Toronto coming online Aug. 1. Ms. Lorenz plans to hire staff in every major Canadian city, eventually having more than 100 employees across Canada and 100,000 subscribers. Mr. Drexler also has trademarked the Be The Game brand and has established distribution in the United States. He is planning a trip to a major hockey tournament in Switzerland in February, where he will pitch the company to the European market. “We are going to be the leader in child development in Canada and the United States and hopefully now in Europe,” he said. http://www.financialpost.com/small-business/Founded+passion/3239762/story.html#ixzz0tt7QOWPc Lessons for Entrepeneurs 2010-07-16T22:41:43+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/whether_to_lease_or_buy_-_financial_post/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/whether_to_lease_or_buy_-_financial_post/#When:17:10:27Z If you are in the market for new equipment and are not sure whether it makes more sense to buy or lease, you are not alone. “There’s no easy answer,” says Simon Parker, director of the Ivey School of Business’s Driving Growth Through Entrepreneurship & Innovation Cross-Enterprise Leadership Research Centre.ALEXANDRA LOPEZ-PACHECO If you are in the market for new equipment and are not sure whether it makes more sense to buy or lease, you are not alone. There’s no easy answer, says Simon Parker, director of the Ivey School of Business’s   Driving Growth Through Entrepreneurship & Innovation Cross-Enterprise Leadership Research Centre. “It’s a complex trade off,” he says. “When you’re buying, that’s a sunk investment. If things go wrong, or your business goes badly, you can’t get much of that investment back. At most, you might be able to sell some of that equipment and get some second-hand value for it.” So if you are worried about uncertainties in the economy, or challenges and threats specific to your market, “leasing gives you more flexibility,” Mr.  Parker says. “In the short run, if you’re very uncertain about your trading environment and the survival of your firm, you might very well be looking at leasing, which is usually the more expensive option in the long run but it avoids this big sunk problem if you end up not succeeding. Some markets aren’t as competitive as others and in those sorts of cases you could be paying quite a high price for that flexibility. Everything has a high price: money has a price, it’s called the interest rate. Flexibility has a price: sometimes it’s high cost,”  he says. Even if you have a well-capitalized business in a sector that is relatively immune to the current uncertainties in the economy and you have a strong, loyal client base with lucrative opportunities for growth at your fingertips, buying — usually less expensive long term — isn’t necessarily the best option, Mr. Parker says. “It depends on the kind of equipment you’re looking to buy,” he says. “Take computers. We all know how frequently we have to update our machines. It seems like every two years we need a new laptop or desktop because software is constantly improving and that puts continued demands on hardware. Do we want to be stuck with late 1990s machines? It’s going to be very hard to do business in 2010 using obsolete equipment. So, with the kinds of equipment that technology changes rapidly, you’d probably expect a greater tendency to lease even among well-capitalized firms.” However,  you also have to consider what Mr. Parker describes as the familiarity cost if you lease the equipment. “It takes people a while to get to know the equipment and to master it and to really use it to its full potential,” he says. “If you buy you’re more likely to be sticking with your equipment longer. That economizes on all sorts of set up costs you might get with leasing. But then there’s the familiarity cost. It’s not so much of an issue with something like a photocopier because typically those are things that are fairly generic, but with more specialized types of equipment a downside to leasing could be the familiarity cost if the equipment keeps getting replaced and upgraded and that might not be fully under your control; it might be more under control of the leasing company.” http://www.financialpost.com/small-business/Whether+lease/3266584/story.html#ixzz0trmA93vI Lessons for Entrepeneurs 2010-07-16T17:10:27+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/small_business_makes_custom_tailored_shirts_to_order_-_small_biz_blog/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/small_business_makes_custom_tailored_shirts_to_order_-_small_biz_blog/#When:21:08:27Z Shirtpal’s success has grown steadily since its inception in December 2009. Its founders, entrepreneurs Winnie Cheung and Noorneet Singh, are recent graduates from the Richard Ivey School of Business.  The company is currently expanding across Canada, with local events in Toronto,  Vancouver and Montreal. Global operations exist in Sydney, Thailand,  Japan and Singapore.ANDREW PATRICIO Shirtpal is a Toronto-based company specializing in men’s custom tailored shirts.  Their aim is to revolutionize your shopping experience by offering perfect fit custom dress shirts for off the rack prices.  Shirtpal differentiates itself from its competitors with its well-designed website that offers the ability to custom design shirts from the comfort of your own home.  Options include custom monograms, collars and cuffs.  Shirtpal puts a huge emphasis on user experience and has recently brought on image consultants.  Their purpose is to provide advice to customers, completely tailored to the individual.    Information gathered includes profession, common colors worn by the individual, and what’s currently in their wardrobe.  Shirtpal’s success has grown steadily since its inception in December 2009. Its founders, Winnie Cheung and Noorneet Singh, are recent graduates from the Richard Ivey School of Business.  The company is currently expanding across Canada, with local events in Toronto,  Vancouver and Montreal. Global operations exist in Sydney, Thailand,  Japan and Singapore.  Attending these events allows customers to have their measurements taken, speak with our image consultants, see shirt samples and feel the fabrics.  Winnie and Noorneet are also very big on giving back to the community.  Shirtpal has established a partnership with Buy1Give1, a charitable organization.  For every shirt the company sells, Shirtpal will clothe and provide toiletries for a child in Mumbai.  Shirtpal’s goal is to clothe approximately 25,000 children this year.  To check out their website and book an appointment for one of their local events, visit www.shirtpal.com Original article posted on Small Biz Blog Ivey Entrepreneurs in the News 2010-06-23T21:08:27+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/new_game_new_plan_-_financial_post/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/new_game_new_plan_-_financial_post/#When:17:59:50Z Almost one-quarter of Canadians plan to start their own businesses   soon. Anyone who takes up the challenge of business start-up today would do well to examine how entrepreneurship has changed in this century. The biggest change is that today, less is best.TONY WANLESS In a recent survey reported by the Financial Post, one in three Canadians said they were interested in starting their own business in the next two years. Of that group, 35% said they’re going to follow through with those plans. If we extrapolate from the survey of 1,010 Canadians by the tax and accounting software maker Intuit, that means almost one-quarter of Canadians plan to start their own businesses soon. If even half of those do follow up on their dreams, that will be quite astonishing. What will also be astonishing, however, is if those thousands of would-be Canadian entrepreneurs proceed as 21st-century entrepreneurs instead of blindly imitating the entrepreneurship methodology of 30 years ago. Anyone who takes up the challenge of business start-up today would do well to examine how entrepreneurship has changed in this century. The biggest change is that today, less is best. Starting a business now is all about less —as in less elaborate business planning; less imitation and more innovation; less step-by-step execution and more going with the flow;  less one-way delivery and marketing and more conversation with customers. This less-is-best concept generally goes against traditional business training, which is based on the old industrial/  retail system. Business plans, for example, are about execution of known factors, so if you’re building a factory that is going to be around for 10 or 20 years, you’ll need a business plan. But in today’s world of continuing change, any plan that details steps further out than quarterly or semi-annually is unsuited for anyone starting a small business. The top entrepreneurship method now is the lean startup,  an application of Lean thinking, which is an organizational method of operation derived from the Toyota production system. In Lean thinking,  an organization attempts to eliminate all wasteful effort and cost. Lean thinking means new start-ups rarely use formal business plans in the beginning because in a rapidly changing world they cannot obtain the information they need to plan several years in the future. In fact, in 2002, the magazine Inc. surveyed founders from its Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing entrepreneurial companies and found that only 40% had written formal business plans. Of those, nearly two-thirds said they changed their businesses considerably from their original plan. The lean start-up applies the Leanthinking approach at the crucial period when new companies often have a concept but really don’t know how their businesses are going to evolve. Since most new businesses —even those in traditional areas such as retail or services—now primarily operate online, this learning process is much easier. Generally, a Lean start-up features three characteristics: -It keeps costs low by using open source and free software. If those aren’t available, it uses low-cost cloud computing (renting software and other services online) instead of initially buying expensive systems and software. They also endeavour to “rent” as many business needs, such as personnel, as possible; -It applies agile development when creating products or services. In this methodology, product development borrows from new software-creation models. Agile development is perfect for start-ups in which the problem (the genesis for all business concepts) and the solution (the business’ answer to the problem) are still fuzzy; -It constantly talks with customers, existing or potential, to see how they can improve. It usually begins with a simple product or service and then change or expand it to answer customer concerns. Its main business process is continual customer research and development. A good example of this modern form of small business development is Stewart Butterfield of Vancouver, who co-founded with his then-wife Caterina Fake a company that had developed a multi-player online game. The game went nowhere, so they dumped it and began working on an instant messaging application that had features such as game-like experience and the ability to handle photos. That soon evolved into a photo-sharing application that, in 2004, became Flickr, now the most dominant photosharing site on the Internet. Ms. Fake, who has since divorced from Mr. Butterfield, said the pair couldn’t write a business plan because they couldn’t do any research on where the company might go. “We weren’t planning on building a photosharing site,” she said. “If we had done our research, we would have said we shouldn’t bother because it’s all been sewn up [by competitors].” Flickr’s story is a tech one, but that doesn’t mean other entrepreneurs can’t learn from it and apply it to their own industry. The biggest lesson is that in the early years businesses often change as they attempt to find a market niche in which their concept meshes with customer needs. http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/game+plan/3091155/story.html#ixzz0qZKO7hL4 2010-06-11T17:59:50+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/why_you_may_need_a_mentor_-_financial_post/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/why_you_may_need_a_mentor_-_financial_post/#When:19:57:17Z You don’t know what you don’t know. And as an entrepreneur starting a business, what you don’t know can stop you before you get going. That,  says David Simpson, a teacher in the entrepreneurship program at the Richard Ivey School of Business, is why mentors are critical to getting a business going and growing.MARY TERESA BITTI You don’t know what you don’t know. And as an entrepreneur starting a business, what you don’t know can stop you before you get going. That,  says David Simpson, a teacher in the entrepreneurship program at the Richard Ivey School of Business, is why mentors are critical to getting a business going and growing. Brad Cherniak, partner, Sapient Capital Partners equates the benefits of a mentor to those of an effective advisory board. “They end up being a resource the CEO otherwise wouldn’t have,” says Mr. Cherniak. “Entrepreneurs tend to deal with a sense of isolation. They don’t necessarily confide in their employees, especially when they are nervous and things are bad. The notion of a mentor is enticing because they have your best interest at heart and they want to help you.” Mr. Simpson calls mentors “truth tellers.”  “Entrepreneurs inherently have poor self-awareness. They think they can do everything and they are pretty confident in their idea and that’s why they need someone who has been there and done that to tell them the truth about a situation. For example, you don’t have the skill-set for that, or your business is not ready for this. A mentor can do that.” A mentor, says Mr. Simpson, can also bring a sense of calm to situations because they understand bad things happen all the time, especially in the start-up phase and it’s not the end of the world. They can also help stop some of those bad things from happening by looking for potential traps. “For all your business relationships/arrangements with landlords, suppliers, banks and general negotiations having a seasoned mentor is absolutely critical because otherwise, it’s easy to put your business in an untenable position for a long time,” says Mr. Simpson. “That extends to customers, too. Young entrepreneurs typically think the customer is always right. A mentor who has been there will advise you that is not correct. The right customer is always right. Some customers are business killers, taking way too much of your time.” Perhaps most important, a mentor can provide a source of contacts and help you expand your circle of trust. “Mentors can open doors,” says Mr. Simpson. “This is especially true for younger entrepreneurs. For example, there are some high-growth medical companies where young people have really great ideas but one of the biggest problems is access. Getting in to see a hospital board as a 21-year-old with a really good idea is tough. You have to find some grey hair,  somebody who can make that first call.” So how do you find a mentor? Mr. Simpson offers the following advice: Ask. “I heard about a young entrepreneur who has billionaire Jim Pattison as his mentor/advisor. How did he manage that? He asked him. Most successful entrepreneurs love to help young people.” Identify what you want to look like when you grow up. “Who today represents the kind of business you want to be like in 20 years? If you want to look like IBM,  talk to a senior executive or a retired executive from there.” Reach out to successful entrepreneurs who have started and sold a business.  “They will know the good and bad and can take you right along.” Go to your industry association. Take a look at the list of its member companies and call up CEOs you admire. “Tell them you are a new entrant to the industry and would like to talk. Most will.” http://www.financialpost.com/small-business/advice/story.html?id=3092732 Lessons for Entrepeneurs 2010-06-02T19:57:17+00:00 http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/one_size_wont_fit_all_-_globe_and_mail/ http://www.iveyentrepreneur.ca/index.php/site/one_size_wont_fit_all_-_globe_and_mail/#When:01:00:30Z Be wary of pitfalls associated with learning from other industries. “The risk is in looking only at the surface attributes and not understanding the business economics of a strategy,” said Stewart Thornhill, entrepreneurship professor at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business.SHARDA PRASHAD Small-business owners can learn from using strategies from another industry, but they also need to be aware of the associated pitfalls. “The risk is in looking only at the surface attributes and not understanding the business economics of a strategy,” said Stewart Thornhill, entrepreneurship professor at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business. About a decade ago, he noted, a company tried to adopt the idea of the colour-use indicator on toothbrushes (which signal when it’s time to replace the product) and transfer that idea to golf balls. The company, Performance Indicator, created a ball that turned grey when it was water-logged and thus useless. When it became water-logged, however, golfers didn’t specifically buy another Performance Indicator ball. “While people were brand loyal with the toothbrush, they weren’t with the golf ball,” Prof. Thornhill said. “In this case, the underlying business economics of the strategy was missed.” He suggests that business owners consider applying concepts from another industry as more of a defensive strategy. “A lot of businesses get disrupted by strategies from other industries. A cautionary note is ‘Don’t get used to your strategy, because there is always someone out there looking for a better way to do your business.’” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/your-business/grow/expanding-the-business/one-size-wont-fit-all/article1565956/ Lessons for Entrepeneurs 2010-05-13T01:00:30+00:00