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9 Reasons You Should Blog

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This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

I think everyone should blog, especially entrepreneurs, so here are my top 9 reasons why you should be blogging if you aren’t already.

1. It’s your new resume. I had a recruiter call me once out of the blue. She said, “Hi Dan, this is Emily from a recruiting firm. I just finished reading your blog and I don’t really have any questions for you. I just wanted to let you know that you are perfect for a job I’m trying to fill and I wanted to see if you would be interested.” Wait, what? I was stunned. I had never met this woman before in my life and she already knew that I was a great fit for the job she was trying to fill. It was actually a very good position at a great firm. Make your resume dynamic. We are no longer in the world of 1 page resumes.

2. It’s your new hiring tool. As an entrepreneur or hiring manager, think about #1 in reverse. If you are trying to hire for certain positions, people will want to know who you are and what you are about. Show people why they should be a part of your endeavor. Why they should be on your team. Blogging is a great way to do this.

3. Network with new people. I tried making music once with some fancy DJ software. I didn’t know what I was doing so I googled, “how to make house music” (that story for later). I was curious. I stumbled upon a few blogs, left a few comments and questions and before I knew it I had a new friend. This was a person I had never met before but it was a person that took special interest in my questions and helped me understand what I was trying to learn. After some back and forth, I was able to create some solid tracks. Now I listen to his tracks whenever they are released. New friend in the music world.

4. Turn messy ideas into neat ones. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They exist as some lofty, grandiose thing that lives in your head and your head alone. When you talk about those ideas they begin to make more sense. When you write about those ideas they make even more sense. This is often the reason why people write business plans. Having a blog is a great outlet to force your brain into a laser-focused state of mind. Sure, you could do this in some private notebook but what fun would that be? Furthermore, it might help you with point #1 or #2. It might even help you find business partners.

5. Reflect on your past to improve your future. When you blog, your thoughts and ideas are documented over time. Sometimes you may take certain stances on topics that may prove to be right or wrong later. By documenting your ideas in sequence, you can look back and reflect on how your ideas and opinions evolve over time. Looking at the past is critically important in understanding how to improve the future. This is why students at Harvard Business School review hundreds of business case studies. Learn from the past.

6. Get some peace of mind. As I write this post I have 15 different tabs open in my web browser, all of which require a different mindset (e.g. music vs. email, Facebook vs. Google docs spreadsheet). However, as I write this post I’m able to momentarily focus my mind on one stream of conscious thought. Doing this can be particularly hard in today’s world considering how many distractions there are. Just like the blinking Gmail tab telling me to check the 9 new emails I have waiting in my inbox. But for now I’ll ignore those and continue on with the post.

7. Create your own PR machine. If I was working on my own project or business my blog would be the first place I’d talk about it. It’s your own Public Relations soapbox. It also helps surface your views on a specific topic or industry. Views that might help you win new business. In the past, we needed radio and TV to get our messages across. Not today.

8. Juice up your writing skills. I suck at writing. I’ve maybe taken 3 writing classes throughout my life. But just like anything else, practice makes perfect and the more I write on my blog the more I find my skills improving slowly but surely. And when you consider that most work and sales today is done over email, you quickly realize that it’s much more critical to have good writing skills than ever before. 

9. Produce more, consume less. It’s very easy to get caught up with media consumption. There are many days where I feel as if I’ve achieved nothing because I spent my entire day consuming other people’s content. This is a very dangerous road. I believe that by asserting yourself as a contributor instead of a consumer, you will realize huge payoffs down the road. Be a builder. Be a producer.

So if you are feeling a little motivated to start you’re own blog, I would suggest taking a look at wordpress.com and tumblr. You could be up and running in no time.

And if you already have a blog, I’d love to read it. We can connect on another micro-blogging service like twitter – @danreich.

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How To Start A Company

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

Starting a company is a daunting task and taking the first step sometimes seems impossible. I’ve encountered a number of people with the dilemma of “I know what I want to do but I don’t know how to start.” And rightfully so. Taking an abstract idea from thought to fruition is one of the hardest things to do. It’s why the failure rate of new business endeavors is so high. It’s also why most investors value people and execution of ideas above anything else. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but being able to execute on a vision is an entirely different story.

So how does someone actually start a business? The great thing about starting a business is that it requires creativity. Sure, you need to be creative in formulating the idea, but I think what goes overlooked often is the fact that you need to be even more creative with specifics around how you start the business. It doesn’t really matter what industry you are in. If you can be creative at both developing the idea and launching the business, I think you’ll have greater chances of success.

Here are a 7 examples of how you might consider starting a business.

1. Build a specific solution, for a specific problem, for a specific client. Most doctor’s offices confuse me. Not only do they confuse me, they drive me crazy. When I walk into a doctor’s office today I look over the counter and see endless shelves of manila envelopes. There must be thousands of sloppy, handwritten notes just sitting there unprotected in those color coated manila envelops. Every time I walk in I have the urge to walk up to the doctor and say, “give me $100,000. I’ll build you a digital solution for this mess and you will get lifetime rights to the technology. I’ll get to sell this to other doctors but you will get to use this technology forever.” If you see a specific problem that you think you can address, you might be able to find one client who will fund development. You will give them lifetime rights to the technology and in return, they will pay you and let you resell the solution to others.

2. Sell now, build later. Sometimes the best way to go about starting something is to first understand whether or not it makes sense to start. The best way to do this is to sell or pitch an idea to perspective clients before you even have a working or tangible product. When I was in college, I told the owner of a bar that I wanted to host an event on behalf of my marketing firm. I told him I was going to donate money to the charity I’ve worked with in the past. I told him I was going to bring in my entertainment. I told him I was going to create a marketing campaign. These were all lies. I didn’t have any of these things. I didn’t have a “marketing firm.” Well, he agreed to the event and I built up all the necessary pieces after it was sold through.

3. Go back to school. Do you know how much intellectual capital exists in academic universities? That’s why they are called academic institutions. They are pillars of knowledge and these pillars often facilitate cutting edge research. But sometimes these new technologies are never designed with the goal of commercialization in mind. When I was in school, I had a professor working on technology that could literally change the world. He had no interest in bringing this technology to market. He only cared about being published in some research paper. When I asked if I could take the technology to market, he was ecstatic. I expect there are others out there that have great innovations but have no interest in building a business with them. But maybe you do. Physically going back to school to explore these opportunities could potentially lead to the start of a new endeavor. It could be a school visit. It could be a school enrollment.

4. Combine and conquer. Sometimes two heads are simply better than one. It’s tough work staying motivated or even getting motivated in the first place to create a business. When you team up with someone and bring on a partner, you might find that a little bit of motivation and encouragement are enough to move the needle in terms of execution. Having a partner might also free up some burdens so you can focus on more pressing issues. And just having concerted dialog with someone else, who has the same directional goals, could also be that missing factor needed to start a new business.

5. Take money, make money. There are certain companies and industries that require a large capital investment to get started. For example, it would be nearly impossible to build an alternative energy company without some form of initial capital investment. These funds would most likely go towards research and development or manufacturing. In some cases, you may need to just go out and ask people for money in order to fund the development of the first iteration of your product or technology. But maybe you aren’t building an energy company and maybe a quick infusion of $5,000 to $10,000 from friends and family might be enough to kick start your company.

6. Leverage a distressed asset. People make great livings flipping houses (or used to anyway). They buy cheap and sell high. Many times people will buy cheap, fix up the house and bit, and than sell high. This is no different with businesses. There are plenty of distressed assets and companies out there that would love to be acquired for peanuts even though there is still huge potential and room for growth.

7. Don’t be glamorous. I heard a story once of a guy who sold hot dogs for a living. He made about $800k a year selling hot dogs and did so by setting up two hot dog stands at the entrances and exits of Home Depot stores. Not exactly an exciting job but it definitely pays the bills. There are probably a dozen other ways you can turn a low level job into a meaningful, high income producing business.

I’m sure this list can go on for quite a while, but what methods of launching a business have you seen?

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Facebook F8 Changes Solidifies Social Infrastructure for the Web

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

The recent changes announced at Facebook’s F8 conference solidifies their place as the first real social infrastructure for the web and this is very important for a number of reasons. At a high level, it’s important to understand that technology innovations alone are meaningless. What matters is how new technology advances or enhances previously existing technology. People refer to this as a “technology stack.” Consider the time when Benjamin Franklin unveiled electricity. Only until wires were installed across the country were we able to first leverage his invention in new ways. Once we had electricity, people were able to build up the stack and create new devices and technologies on top of one another.

Fast forward a bit to the computer age. Computers came out and made math computations a simple task. Then software came along and made the hardware that much easier to use. Again, building up the stack. Then came the internet which connected computers with one another across the world. Another layer called Google made it even easier to navigate information through this complex network and this changed everything. For the first time people were able to go to a little box and tell a machine exactly what they were looking for and the machine, would in turn, give us the results we were seeking.

And now we have Facebook and their recent changes. This is a company that built its core assets by having people tell them exactly who they are. And yesterday, Facebook made these assets open for the world to leverage – a true social infrastructure on top of the web. This could be equally as important, if not more important than Google. This is also why Google is publicly concerned about Facebook’s growth. Consider the widely popular phrase, “it’s not what you know but who you know.” At a physical level, this saying could be transposed to “It’s not Google, but it’s Facebook.” And there are very real implications here that extend to all facets of our society from news and entertainment to e-commerce and travel. We are at place where third party apps and companies can leverage an already existing infrastructure to build businesses and efficiencies in new ways. This is a new part of the technology stack.

Spotify, the new music service, is the quintessential example of this and it’s probably why Facebook included them as a partner during their F8 event. If you think about how you listen to music you’d realize that you are inherently interested in what your friends are listening to. I’d say 90% of all music I listen to today is a direct result of advice or suggestions I’d be given once upon a time by friends.

These social implications extend to commerce as well. Let’s say you are in the market to buy a new bicycle. And let’s say you read all of the consumer reviews and after compiling thousands of reviews you decide that you are going to buy the Cozmo bike. But now let’s say the night before you make a purchase  you have dinner with friends. And at dinner, you tell them you are going to buy a bike the next morning and your best friend interrupts and says, “I just bought a Rocket bike and it’s awesome. Way better than my crappy Cozmo bike.” In about one second your entire data set gets thrown out the window. Your friend just influenced your buying decision. Today however, these friends are online. And so are bicycle stores. So you can see that real-time purchasing decisions no longer happen in a vacuum as they are influenced by your social network.

This is where the world is going. Spotify and the Cozmo bike story are just two examples of how social connectivity can reshape traditional processes and establishments. We are just at the tip of the iceberg. Real businesses with real societal implications can leverage this social infrastructure in new and meaningful ways. If you are an entrepreneur, this is a very exciting time to be thinking about what the world could look like with a truly connected social ecosystem that has building blocks for you to use.

Game on.

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