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Four For Friday For Entrepreneurs Q1 - Inspiration: What was the inspiration for starting your current business? Q2 - Hiring: What are the three most important things you look for when hiring new staff/employees? Q3 - Personal Politics: Do the personal or political leanings of third-party vendors play a role in determining who you choose to work or partner with? For example, if you learned that a potential business partner was strongly opposed to a socially-charged issue that you were strongly in favor of (e.g., universal health care, gun control, abortion, etc.), would that information in and of itself be a determining factor in your potential or continuing business relationship? Q4 - Dogfooding: When a business owner or leader says their company "eats its own dog food," what they mean is that the company and its employees use the company's own products and services in preference of or in replacement for like or competitive products or services. So for example, if you manufacture nutrition bars, the only nutrition bars you eat are your own. Or, if you're Microsoft, you use your own software in-house on a daily basis. To what extent do you go to encourage 'dogfooding' within your company?
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Q1 - Inspiration: Many moons ago the major motivating factor was a need to support my family and having been recently in accident that limited me physically, and therefore everything that I was qualified to do, I no longer could do physically. But these days, my inspiration stems from feeling that there is far more to me than what I am and believing that, to some extent, being a successful entrepreneur will help me get to where I ought to be.
Q2 - Hiring: Qualifications, preparedness for the interview, and work ethic.
Q3 - Personal Politics: I'd have to be pretty adamantly for/against something. In such a case, if I knew that the business was supporting the opposing cause I wouldn't want to help a cause I'm so against by giving my money to the business that will take that money to support said cause. An example might be something like a business providing financial support to the American Communist Party or Nazi groups, or violent organizations such as the ALF. Otherwise, I'm in business to make money, and I'm not going to let the fact that someone has a differing opinion on something stop me from making that money.
Q4 - Dogfooding: Hmm... in my case, it's more like we tell people about dog food as our service. So I would encourage employees to eat as many different types of dog food as possible so they can be experts on it.
Addressing question 3:
If I found out a business partner was strongly opposed to a socially-charged issue (e.g., universal health care, gun control, abortion), I would not allow that to be a determining factor in continuing that business relationship. However, if I found the person to be unethical, or if I found that the person engaged in illegal types of behavior (e.g., child porn, solicited minors, committed fraud), then that would be a reason not to work with that person. It's alright to have an opinion about social issues, but once one crosses those ethical lines, then those business ties should end. I would not want to support someone who engaged in those type of activities.
Q1 - I had planned to make toys in my retirement; I had not expected that I would be thrust into retirement quite this soon.
Q2 - Since my market niche is: toys handmade by Santa, I don't plan to add staff. If, however, the market shows interest in buying gifts that I don't have interest in making, I would consider adding pieces made by "elf" artists. I would simply add their pieces to my webpage.
Q3 - Any added artists, as mentioned above, would be suppliers and therefore politics would not be much of an issue on a daily basis.
Q4 - Dogfooding is not an issue for me; however, I do occasionally play with my toys, especially the yoyos.
1. Inspiration. I was inspired for my current business by the first company I started, GearTrade. Generally by hooking me on entrepreneurship, specifically by seeing the market opportunity.
2. Hiring. Simple: Intelligence, Work Ethic, and Trust.
3. Personal Politics. I think most people would say no to this; my answer is no too, and I back it up by thinking off the top of my head of 4-5 examples where the vendor/partner has politics I really don't agree with, and I still work with them. As they say, it's just business.
4. Dogfooding. I think this is one I've struggled with. My company is such that ultimate dogfooding would be perceived as my employees competing with our customers, with inside information no less. So it's tricky, but we could do tons more. You also have to use your competitors products, otherwise you might get drunk on your own dogfood. It's a great concept to do it as much as possible.