Awesome Marketing Quotes

Three of our favourite marketing quotes are:

“Marketing is not an event, but a process . . . It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it completely.” ~Jay Conrad Levinson

"Sell to their needs, not yours." ~ Earl G. Graves

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” ~Peter F. Drucker

What's your favourite marketing quote?

Great Business Ideas That Are Way Too Easy!

Start your own business by:

- signing and promoting local bands to high school and uni crowds

-teaching older people how to use modern technologies - computers, the internet, mobile phones, blogs

Both quick, relatively easy and using skills you might just have, hiding inside you...

What's your simple business idea that's way too easy?

Another Amazing Young Entrepreneur

It never ceases to amaze us here at The FRANK Team the potential in young entrepreneurs. Check out this article on a young entrepreneur from South Australia, Shane Yeend, who started his own business at 15 and (in no particular order) brought the E-Entertainment television network to Australia, created a board game that outsold Monopoly in Australia in 90 days and is now a global market leader in DVD games, among other things!

Who's the most amazing young entrepreneur you know? Or know of? We'd love to hear your opinions!

70% of Gen Ys want to run their own business

Many managers currently working with the ambitions and expectations of their Gen Y staff would not be too shocked with this finding. They know that most Gen Ys believe they should be running the business already. So it is no surprise that 70% of these Gen Ys harbour a vision of one day running their own business. And that ‘one-day’ is not too far away.

This is what the initial findings into the entrepreneurial aspirations of young Australians are finding. The Frank Team has decided to release some early data that is surfacing in their research into young Australians under the age of 35 and their career aspirations.

The Frank Team was founded by young entrepreneur Jessica Kiely and has been working with young entrepreneurs for the last six years. They were seeing more young Australians recognising the need to be entrepreneurial in their careers to get to where they want to, and a large majority having the desire to run their own business at some stage in their careers. However, despite these realisations there were lacking in opportunities to develop these skills and ideas further. The only other research that has been conducted in this area was a research and scoping paper by the Department of Family and Community Services in 2003 that found there were 170,000 young people under the age of 30 currently running their own business.

70% of respondents in the current survey indicated they think they will start a new business venture in the future. The most common barriers to starting their new business venture were all practical in nature, not attitudinal. These barriers included needing start up capital/finance (68%), their idea needed more development (50%) and the need for more education & training (40%).

A range of assistance options were identified by the respondents that they would use if available to help them start their business. The top rated ones were financing (74%), advice (56%), networking with other young entrepreneurs (55%) and training programs (55%).

It was also found that 76% of respondents rated entrepreneurial skills as highly important for their careers. When you consider also that in an average career today’s learner will have 10 – 14 jobs by the age of 38, and most of the jobs that will be in demand in 10 years from now don’t even exist yet, it is clear this entrepreneurial attitude and skills base is essential. So if the skills of innovation, educated risk taking, creativity, negotiation, thought leadership and the other entrepreneurial traits are essential, are they being taught within our schools and tertiary institutions? Our education systems are still designed to produce students with an employee mentality not an employer mentality.

Not only are we missing out on the opportunity to build that entrepreneurial attitude in our youth to get them through this Career phase, but it appears that our organisations are also not harnessing the ideas and enthusiasm of its younger workers. 84% of respondents have suggested an idea to their employer in their careers, and a good majority (68%) are highly comfortable with suggesting an idea to their employer. However, in contrast to the entrepreneurialism of these respondents, only 35% felt their employer was highly supportive of new ideas.

Sure any entrepreneur worth their weight in Richard-BransonNESS can make success happen despite a lack of anything really, but there would no doubt be more starters and faster growth if some of these key resources currently available to the adult market, were also made available to this emerging market in a manner that was relevant and engaging to their styles.

The Frank Team wish to extend the survey reach to build an even better picture of youth entrepreneurship in Australia today. This will help to inform policy and business practices that will assist Australia to remain at the forefront of innovation & business success by utilising and unleashing the entrepreneurial talents of its youth. Please get your young people to visit www.frankteam.com.au and click on the survey link at the bottom of the page.

What are you currently doing to inspire and develop the entrepreneurial skills of your young people or for yourself?

The Frank Team has a range of programs for schools, tertiary organisations and government departments to utilise to develop the entrepreneurial skills and ideas of their young people. Contact us for more info today.

Networking Tips

Networking is something that we are huge fans of here at The FRANK Team! It's a great way to meet like-minded people, make potentially valuable business and personal contacts, and come into contact with a really wide variety of ideas and opportunities.

So many networking contacts aren't followed up, or are made for the wrong reasons. Below is a link to an article with networking tips. Keep it in mind next time you're out there networking!

Check it out from Smart Company here!

ACTIVATE Young Entrepreneurs Workshop Sydney

Hi everyone,

We wanted to let you know about a FREE Young Entrepreneurs Workshop happening in Sydney on 7th May – read on for all the info, then send us an email to register your attendance!

Please help us spread the word amongst all the young entrepreneurs out there; pass this on to any contacts or young people you work with who might be interested!

Have a great week :D

Cheers
Anna

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Ever wanted to start your own biz?
Or wanna grow your biz to the next phase?
Make your FAB idea a reality!

ACTIVATE - a FREE workshop run by young people for young people

7^th May 2008 - 9:30am-12:00pm
Lvl 47, MLC Centre, Martin Place, Sydney

ACTIVATE your business start up or growth ideas with some strategic business planning that is highly practical and inspiring and run by a fellow young entrepreneur.

This is your opportunity for some fun and awesome training, inspiration, facilitated networking & self promotion for your great idea or business!

Limited places are available so you must RSVP.

To register your attendance, please email anna@frankteam.com.au

For more info check out the flyer @ http://www.frankteam.com.au/downloads/ACTIVATE08.pdf

ACTIVATE is suitable for young people who already have a solid business idea - so if you have already started a business, or you are looking at starting in the next couple of months, then we'd love you to come along!

This event is an initiative of The NSW Department of State and Regional Development, and is hosted by The FRANK Team.

Hope to see you there!
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Young Online Entrepreneur's Secrets Uploaded

Last night was the NSW DSRD Young Online Entrepreneurs Event - ONLINE EDGE in Sydney.

It was a fabulous event with over 60 people in attendance. NSW DSRD in partnership with The Frank Team organised this event and Jessica Kiely was the MC for the event.

The panel of successful Young Online Entrepreneurs was made up of:

FRED SCHEBESTA – Founder online marketing agency FreestyleMedia; 2006 ADMA Young Direct Marketer of the Year.

GEOFF MCQUEEN – Founder of software and interactive development company Internetrix and winner of numerous business and web awards.

ZAC ZAVOS – Man behind sports and pop culture websites ‘The Roar’ which recently signed partnership agreement with MySpace to power their sports content and “Lost at E Minor” site.

NICKY ADAMO – CEO of lingerie and sleepwear label Julianne, exporting to UK, US, Hong Kong and Indonesia.

Here are some the "secrets to success" they revealed last night:

1. You must have a BIG passion for what you do and really enjoy that thing that you "do" with your business. Whether that is building websites, getting advertisers, making lingerie etc, you really must have a passion for it.
2. Be prepared for long hours as it takes a lot of blood, sweat and hours to build a successful online empire.
3. Be persistent. Never give up. This is what will set you apart from others.
4. Do your research as much as possible. This research is not just about market and customers, but also largely about competitors and how to really "do" business well.
5. "Leaders are Readers" (quote from Fred Schebesta) and so read voraciously about everything to do with your business and how to "do" business well.
6. Contacts and networking are essential as this is where new business and new contacts will come from. And USE those contacts.
7. Ask for help when you need it or when you have questions. Use your friends, contacts and government services to answer your questions.
8. Contracts are important to put in place not just with clients but also with suppliers. This ensures you set expectations before you begin, and you cover yourself. With contracts you often don't need big and expensive lawyers you can usually decipher it yourself, it just takes time to do. So only spend the $$ on lawyers when you need to clarify the few bits of the contract that confuse you. Or have someone on your team with some law background.
9. Business with family & friends can work when managed well as there is a large amount of trust there.
10. You need to really understand the core desires, needs and motivators of your customers and communicate how you satisfy those needs cleverly and clearly and consistently. This means you really need to know your customers REALLY well, so make sure you go and hang out with them as much as possible.
11. The growth areas online:
- Rich content and providing that rich content eg: videos
- User generated content that is very specific and niche
- Maturing of the ecommerce use in the Australian market
- More niching

Some really awesome and practical tips there. Thanks to Fred, Zac, Geoff and Nicky.

If you want to start planning your business then sign up now for the ACTIVATE workshop running on the 7th may in sydney by The Frank Team.

If you attended the workshop then email or post your comments and other "Secrets" you picked up from attending.

Can't wait for the next one. Stay tuned.