Scott Belsky of Behance

In one of the interviews for my upcoming book, the case was made that, to fully engage in the entrepreneurial pursuit, you must be, to some extent, delusional. I was interviewing Andrew Weinreich, a classic trailblazing serial entrepreneur. Weinreich created one of the earliest social networks, SixDegrees.com, which he eventually sold in January, 2000 to Youthstream Media Networks, a publicly held company, for $125 million. He then founded meetmoi.com, a mobile dating service. In each venture, Weinreich has played the role of founder and leader.

“Entrepreneurs are not the ones with the best ideas, they’re just the ones willing to jump off a cliff without the answers,” explained Weinreich. When he took the plunge on his first venture, he didn’t see a finish line - and he thinks it is wrong to have one in mind. Instead, he believes that the best start-up teams just try “to stay in the 5th inning forever.” Weinreich calls this “the process of willful delusion.” “If you have ends in mind, that’s a big problem.” You must somehow stay engaged with incremental progress and keep momentum, even if you find yourself staying in the same inning. read more

We all have a responsibility to make our projects sustainable. Whether we work in large corporations or on our own, when it comes to leading ideas, we are entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is strictly defined as a person who organizes and manages any enterprise with considerable initiative and risk.  For an idea to thrive over time, we must find ways to stay engaged, share ownership, and be comfortable with the unexpected.

As we approach our ideas as entrepreneurs, we should ourselves a series of questions:

With each experience, are we getting closer to our true interests and potential?

Of course, statistically speaking, most ideas never happen and most new business ventures fail. When you pursue a new idea, it is impossible to know whether it will become a viable business and attract a team. You don’t need to know the outcome. However, at the very least, every experience you take should move you closer to your interests. When people come to me for career advice, I profess that I have no idea what they should or shouldn’t do. However, I explain that any career move that gets them closer to their interests is a safe move to take. What you want to avoid doing is something that keeps you stationary or sets you back. A fledgling idea that is completely unrelated to your core interests is likely too risky because, if it fails, it will offer no circumstantial benefits. Whereas, if the idea is related to your passions in life, the experiential education gained in pursuit will be valuable – whether or not the idea ultimately happens.

Can we let others own our ideas?

Empowering others as owners will increase commitment. Intellectual ownership also serves as a form of non-financial compensation. When you embark on an idea, you won’t be able to afford great partners and employees unless you are able to share ownership. Ironically, if your idea for a new venture is too sacred and dear to you, it may suffer as you try to motivate a team. The need for momentum in the early days of idea execution requires that you unleash control and, at times, compromise your singular artistic vision to make room for the visions of others. read more

Entrepreneur Paul English was tired of navigating the endless menus of options when trying to get some customer service. Whether it was an airline, utility company, or car service center, English simply wanted to talk to a human. This was the inspiration behind his “Get Human” project. What started as a blog and growing database has now become a widely publicized campaign to transcend the depersonalization of customer service.

Behance caught up with English to discuss how he pushes ideas forward, his value for partnerships in projects, and his process for testing and developing ideas into successful outcomes.

Paul English is a serial entrepreneur. He co-founded kayak.com and subsequently raised $30 million dollars to grow the travel company. He has many ideas, and he has a solid process to push them forward. He also reports that many people describe him as “the poster child for ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).” As he explains, “A lot of creatives will go from idea to idea to idea, and when they encounter something painful, they just move on rather than solve the problem.” English describes this as the “blessing and curse of creativity.” English’s approach to the problem involves finding the right partners for his projects.

“I have hired people around me that are extremely predictable. They have the execution skills that I don’t, and they’re likely to keep me focused and the idea focused.” English credits the teams he has built around his various ideas with the follow through and success he has experienced. From his experience founding kayak.com and Get Human, English advocates “partnering yourself with someone who may not be as creative as you, but has execution skills.”

The Get Human project is a perfect example of Paul English’s “start small and test” philosophy. The whole idea for Get Human started when English was pissed off with Verizon. He couldn’t get through to customer service and found himself lost in an automatic phone tree. He found relief after coming across a phone number that was answered directly by a human at Verizon. English posted the phone number on his blog and got instant feedback. The blog world, as English explains it, “provides instant feedback because people link to some entries and not to others.” With the Get Human project, users were driving the momentum.

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[From The Interview Archives at Behance]

Note: This is a summary of some tips for starting a business - excerpted from an interview the Behance team conducted last year. While ReadyMade has since been taken over, the challenges encountered during start-up are applicable to all businesses. Some users have commented that, ultimately, ReadyMade was “unsuccessful,” and I would make the point that every start-up experience is personally defining and fruitful of lessons - even if the industry changes or the concept ultimately fails. That being said, consider some of the best practices around practicing what you preach in a start-up business, perspiring when necessary, and generating ideas with restraint…

Shoshana Berger came up with the idea for ReadyMade magazine in 2000 and has since served as its editor in chief. Launching a new magazine required discipline, productivity, and some defiance of conventional wisdom. Shoshana is an established author and, over the course of her career, has worked for Wired Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Spin, Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, Business 2.0, Travel and Leisure, and many other periodicals.

When launching a DIY (Do It Yourself) brand, you’ve got to practice what you preach. ReadyMade took this seriously. As Shoshana explains it, “we did EVERYTHING ourselves in the first two years, from conceiving and proofing every document that went out the door, to stuffing mail bags full of early issues and taking them to the Post Office, to taking out the trash. Nothing that was done by the interns wasn’t done by the founders.”

Shoshana goes on to explain the merits of rolling up your sleeves and making ideas happen. “In the early stages of a startup, or getting any idea off the ground, relaying a consistent message is really important. If you’re going to be a magazine about making stuff, really make stuff! Have your office be a big workshop full of materials and tools that encourage people to tinker and reuse in creative ways. There’s nothing like breaking a problem down into its constituent parts to solve it, and the physical activity of making something (off the computer) is a great way to get your team thinking about how a bunch of parts make a whole.”

Like most creative new companies, ReadyMade never had a shortage of ideas. With creativity comes the struggle to stay focused and sustainable. Shoshana recalls that the team “…wanted to extend ReadyMade magazine’s do-it-yourself content and ethos into so many different channels, from a book publishing arm, to a branch that focused on education, to retail outlets, to producing film and television. From the start we saw no limits and had big, unwieldy ambition. All of those avenues are open to us now, but it took years to get to this stage. A house with many rooms requires a strong foundation. So we focused largely on the magazine and making its vital signs stable (read: profitable). That took far longer than anyone expected. After year three we started exploring all of the aforementioned avenues, but our expectations and timelines are more measured. So that’s the moral: Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

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recession marketing

Rather than suffer through a slow economy, freelancers should seize the opportunity to market themselves! A recession just slows everything down. Clients act more slowly, fewer projects enter the pipeline, and we are left with a little extra time. Rather than fill this time with insecurity, we should use it to differentiate ourselves and build our own personal brands as more actionable, affordable, and innovative. Here are a few tips to consider in these uncomfortable yet opportune times:

(1) Start re-engaging with your rolodex! During the high-flying times, it is easy to lose touch with past clients and colleagues. Now is a great opportunity to re-engage and strengthen your network. Spend some time fixing up your address book, go through that pile of business cards and enter them into your computer, and start connecting the dots on who you want to follow up with. Also, consider being a matchmaker - anyone you set up will feel all the more compelled to return the favor!

(2) Start a monthly email update. Every creative professional has some side projects worth talking about. Why not start a monthly email to your network with 3-5 quick updates on your latest and greatest? If you keep the email short and catchy, your network will likely forward it along to others. And when people need your services, you’ll be top of mind.

(3) Start having breakfast (with whoever you can). Marketing your ideas and your own brand must also happen offline. Consider scheduling two breakfasts per week with a long lost colleague or an old client. You’ll be surprised what potential opportunities and realizations can arise over breakfast.  And besides, breakfast is the cheapest meal of the day! read more

At the conclusion of a long project, the last thing we want to do is change everything up. However, it is only at the end of a project that everyone is fully focused. The holes become more clear and brilliant realizations are most apparent only when the product is practically finished. It is an unfortunate truth that, in such a busy world, we rarely focus on something until we absolutely have to.

At Behance’s 99% Conference this year, Seth Godin talked about “thrashing” and the tendency for everyone to weigh in on an idea towards the end of development - ultimately getting in the way of “shipping” the product on time. It is true that the uninvolved boss or marketing department suddenly swooping in last minute to change things is a nightmare. However, the reality is that people don’t become engaged until they need to.

Some of the most productive leaders we have interviewed suggest that their greatest realizations often come at very inconvenient times - often when it is almost too late to change. The reason is obvious: brain power is concentrated and more able to grasp the tangible outcome of a project only in the final stages. While the team may want to discourage any last minute changes, you will also want to capitalize and capture these insights.

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