The BBC World News – Business Daily speaks with Palo Alto Software CEO, Sabrina Parsons about family succession.

The conversation touches on the topics of “good and bad nepotism” and the worry that if family-run businesses don’t pass down from parent to child, the outcome for the business can in some cases be quite dire.

Both Tim and Sabrina have talked extensively about this topic before, check out their posts Serendipity Succession, Father and Child and Nepotism vs. Family Business.  It’s nice to hear a refresher on the preconceived notions of a daughter stepping into her father’s shoes and how that has personally impacted Sabrina since taking over the company.

Sabrina’s interview starts around the 9:20 mark.

BBC Podcasts – Business Daily News with Steve Evans – Nanny State or caring government? Aug 13, 2010

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager

Books: falling out of fashion, perhaps, but – business books, for sure – still so amazingly practical. What’s an hour of your time worth? How much time can a business book save? I posted here last week, in this context, about John Jantsch’s new book on referral marketing. And today it’s Melinda Emerson’s Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months. I love the book, I’ve got mixed feelings about its title, and I particularly like its real-world common sense.

Real-world common sense like starting at the beginning, not how to go out on your own, precisely, but on whether you want to: Melinda starts with a chapter called “So You Think You Want to be an Entrepreneur.” That’s right, really, and very important in this topic area. So she challenges you to think about what you really want, and whether your idea will work, and do you love what you want to do.

Here’s a great quote from that chapter:

Suddenly becoming a one-salary family is tricky. Make sure that your spouse is behind your decision. If not, your dream can turn into a nightmare.

And another, highlighting Melinda’s offering of real-world hard-nosed “been there done that” insight:

Of course, the best business idea in the world isn’t worth anything if you run out of money. There’s no way around it: starting a business is expensive. It will be a while before you see a return on your investment. That’s why, before you hand the boss your walking papers and box up the personal things in your cubicle, you’d better make sure you and your family are on solid financial ground.

So what don’t I like? Nothing serious; actually, I admit it, these are petty complaints:

• The phrase “become your own boss” in the title. It’s actually a pet peeve of mine: you start a business, you aren’t going to be your own boss; your customers become your boss. But that really has nothing to do with the book. That’s just me.
• The 12-months time frame: Sabrina Parsons and I wrote 3 Weeks to Startup (2008, Entrepreneur Press), so I feel like I have to say that. Still Melinda explains the 12 months extremely well in her second chapter (titled “Why Does it Take Twelve Months”). And I really like the way she schedules the tasks through the months, giving things time to simmer. It goes very well with her overall tone of good practical advice.

What do I like? Lots:

• Melinda is extremely good at keeping the business in the larger context of your whole life. That’s an excellent reminder. Her third chapter focuses on “your life plan” and it’s dripping with good advice, things you really should be considering.
• Her 12-month plan presents a process very well. At the beginning, three months of getting reading, including your life plan in the first, then financial plan, business model, lawyer, accountant. I’ve been there. This is how things really work. Then nine months of getting set, including focus, niche marketing, of course business planning, financing, building a team, recruiting, branding, and so on. Then comes the actual launch, with good discussions of bookkeeping, maintaining marketing, and so on. Throughout, it’s good advice, well organized, clearly written.

So where do I get to the post title above about 4 essential books? This post is about the newest of the four, Melinda Emerson’s Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months. And I’ve already mentioned the one I co-authored, 3 Weeks to Startup. So the other two are two books I like so much I can’t post on this topic without including them. I’ve posted on both of these before: Pamela Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation and Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start. Each has a different point of view, each covers different elements.

Starting a business is a big deal. If you’re serious about it, read all four of these books.

Are you teaching a class on starting a business? If you are, then I’d like you to be aware of course.bplans.com.

That’s where I’ve put up a full curriculum/syllabus including lesson plans, exercises and assignments, online videos, and more than a dozen PowerPoint slide presentations complete with slide-by-slide notes and distribution-friendly photos and graphics.

This is material I’ve worked on for years, originally just for my own use as I taught a course in starting a business for undergrads at the University of Oregon. I’m not going to be teaching that course this spring, after 11 years of it, because I’m more involved with angel investment via the Willamette Angel Conference. But I do want to make it available to others. Why not?

The whole curriculum is free to professors on that site. And, just so you understand the motivation, yes, the coursework requires Business Plan Pro, Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, and my books the Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan and 3 Weeks to Startup (co-authored with Sabrina Parsons). So my company, Palo Alto Software, does make money by selling those to your students. But we have academic pricing, so your students can get all three for less than the $130 average cost of an entrepreneurship textbook. I’d like to think everybody wins.

That’s at course.bplans.com. You’ll find instructions there to get your free registration as a teacher. This was done especially for SBDCs, members of the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship, community colleges and undergrad business education classes. We’ve been a sponsor of the ASBDC network for 15 years now and of NACCE for two years; so we like to think we understand those needs.

Sabrina Parsons posted For the best customer service: TWEET! on her MommyCEO blog earlier this month. She’d called customer service repeatedly, left messages and gotten no response. Then she tweeted about it, and this (the photo below) is what she got: a new, replacement pair of shoes for her son.

This could seem like a good story of a good company, but there’s that dark side to it, the bad service first, followed by good service after it appeared on Twitter. She said:

Here is a company that produces an excellent product and seems to care about customers. But their customer service process is broken. If only those of us who tweet can get good customer care–then they need to fix their process. Don’t get me wrong, though–I love the personal attention I can get from companies via Twitter. But I know those days are numbered. At some point there will be too many people doing the same thing, and Twitter won’t be a good communication vehicle. So companies like this need to fix their customer service issues NOW.

I agree with her conclusion. Twitter is new and exciting, a classic shiny new thing that we can all play with. But mind the telephone in the meantime.

Yes, I’m biased, but still, this is a good list of tips from Sabrina Parsons on the She Takes on the World blog.

1. People are the most important asset in your business. People are also much harder to manage than products or services. As an entrepreneur, you may have heard this from other people: Hire slowly, but fire quickly. This is a very true statement. People will make or break your business, so get the best and don’t settle for less.
2. Set the culture for your company early on. Think about the “culture” you want to maintain and what it takes to do that. For me and Palo Alto Software, being a company of entrepreneurial-minded employees with a very family-friendly attitude is what works. I could never get upset at an employee who puts his/her family first, because that is what I do. People know that; the people who work here love it and appreciate it. Many people say this is the best place they have ever worked. In my opinion, that is not necessarily because it is the best place to work–it is because it is the best place to work for the people who work here. They are a cultural fit with our philosophy.
3. Planning is an ongoing process that helps manage the business. Your plans will not always be right, but they will help you understand where you want to go, how you will get there and what to do when obstacles get in the way.
4. There is more to life than business. Business will be here today and tomorrow and the next day. A healthy approach to running your business includes time off to focus on things that make you personally fulfilled, whether they are family, kids, hobbies, etc.
5. You will never be able to do it all. There is no such thing as “super mom.” Compromises will have to be made. Be honest about the compromises and compromise where you can without losing the morals and values that make you who you are.

Sabrina is CEO of Palo Alto Software. She blogs at MommyCEO.wordpress.com. Why mommyceo, you ask? You probably get that from the picture, which was featured in a profile on USA Today. She’s expecting her third child.

]]> http://upandrunning.bplans.com/2009/08/07/5-business-lessons-to-start-a-business-with/feed/ 2 http://upandrunning.bplans.com/2009/05/19/the-engaging-brand/ http://upandrunning.bplans.com/2009/05/19/the-engaging-brand/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 21:37:03 +0000 Chelle Parmele http://blog.bplans.com/?p=1206

Palo Alto Software’s CEO, Sabrina Parsons, was interviewed by Anna Farmery of The Engaging Brand this morning.  During the podcast, they talked about online marketing, the difference between advertising and marketing,  the link between social media and customer service, and lots more.

Make sure to check out the rest of Anna’s podcasts and articles. Lots of great stuff there!

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager

Have you heard about Startup Weekend? If you live around the San Francisco area, you might want to look into it, but do it quick, time’s running out!

Startup Weekend is a community building startup event. Local developers, marketers, designers, and enthusiasts gather together and do what they do best. Start projects and companies. No talk, all action.

These startup events are held all over the United States, and today in San Francisco  more than 150 software professionals will come together at the Microsoft San Francisco headquarters, intent on creating not just a program for a business startup, but a new community.

Sabrina Parsons, Palo Alto Software’s CEO, and other business professionals will be on hand to give presentations and offer feedback and advice through out the weekend.

For more information on the Startup Weekends and if one might be headed for your area, check out the Startup Weekend website.

‘Chelle Parmele
Palo Alto Software

Did you miss Sabrina Parsons on Friday’s Business Insanity Talk Radio with Barry Moltz?

Not to worry – Listen to it here: Business Planning, Innovation and Your Career

Palo Alto Software CEO, Sabrina Parsons will be one of the guests on Friday’s Business Insanity Talk Radio with host Barry Moltz tomorrow morning.

Barry Moltz has founded and run small businesses with a great deal of success and failure for more than 15 years. This is a business radio show where we talk about all the craziness of small business. It’s that craziness that actually makes it exciting, interesting and totally unpredictable.

Sabrina, Parsons,  Columnist Penelope Trunk and Advanta Bank CIO. Ami Kassar will be on hand to talk Business Planning, Innovation and Your Career.

Tune in and listen

Call-in Number: (347) 426-3202
Upcoming Show: 3/13/2009 7:00 AM

This is the second of three parts. The first part appeared here a month ago. All three were published first on Entrepreneur.com, and are based on the book 3 Weeks to Startup, which I co-authored along with Sabrina Parsons.  That book, published by Entrepreneur Press, came out in the autumn of 2008. It’s built on the idea that most how-to-start books fall back on the older, pre-Web ways to get things done; and that today, because of the tools available, 3 weeks is still credible.

Day 8: Plan your marketing strategy.

Think about your target market. Imagine a hypothetical, ideal customer. Determine his or her age, gender, job, favorite media and family situation. It’s important to know your customer well.

What’s your message? Can you say it in a single sentence? What if you have just one sentence that your customers will listen to? Where would you send that message? How would you reach them?

Think about your marketing strategy and implementation details. Take the time to go through a short but focused marketing plan to make sure you understand what it will take to market your business.

Day 9: Develop your look and feel.

Start developing a sense of the look and feel of your company as your buyers will see it. What will your logo look like? What sense will it convey? Old-fashioned? Trustworthy? Leading edge? Everybody has a brand. What will yours be? How will you get that idea across to customers and potential customers?

Develop your look and feel through logos, signs, letterhead and graphic standards. These are your branding essentials, and you need to have them in place before you get much further.

Day 10: Start building your website.

Have you started your website already? Have you been thinking about it? Today’s the day to get going with that.

If you’re building a Web 2.0 application or any website that’s core to your business, then you might have to settle for simply having begun by the end of the three weeks.

For most businesses, you can have a website built very quickly. Think about the basic elements of your website, and at least get a site up with basic information about you, your business, your products, and your services.

These days there are some good shortcuts available: take a look at TypePad, WordPress, and blogger platforms, for example. These were built for blogging but can apply to many small sites, with little to no  formatting work.

Day 11: Think about how you’re going to get paid.

Think about how your customers will pay you. If you’re going to be selling to consumers, then you probably want to establish a merchant account so you can accept credit cards.

These days, because of the online vendors, there are a lot more options. In the old days you had to go straight to your favorite local bank, which had a detailed and time-consuming process. These days, you have the option of setting yourself up with some Web stores (like Amazon, Yahoo!, and others) that can handle that part of it for you.

If you’re selling to businesses, then think about invoices and credit policies for business customers. There’s no underestimating how important getting paid is.

Day 12: Try making a sale.

Have you been able to make a sale yet? Maybe you should take today to peddle your goods. Even though you’re not fully established yet, lots of businesses (maybe most of them) start selling before they’re fully launched.

This is where you get to make sure that people want to buy what you’re selling.

Even if you can’t make a sale, because things are ready, talk somebody through it. The selling will continue for as long as your business is open, but we wanted to include it here as well because so many businesses are born at the moment the first customer says “yes.”

Day 13: Get an insurance policy.

Time to talk to an insurance broker, and get your business insurance started. These days, you can do a lot of research or even do the whole thing online. And if not, remember the old-fashioned telephone tree-style of finding the right people. Talk to any insurance broker you can think of, ask some questions, and if he or she isn’t the right one, ask who else you should talk to. Find the right person by asking the wrong person who else you should talk to.

In the doing, you’ll find out what kinds of insurance are appropriate for the type of business you’re starting.

Day 14: Build your dream team.

Have you been thinking about how to build your team? Do you know the people you want to bring on? It’s time to start ironing down the team and the employees, and start the recruiting process. Depending on your specifics, you’ll likely need job descriptions, and you’ll need to place ads on the right websites.

Start thinking about your employee list. Who will you need to help you out when you actually open for business? Will it be just you and your business partner? Do you need to hire service people? Drivers? Designers?

To get started, take another look at the financial planning you did in Week 1. See who you can afford to hire and start looking.