On Being an Entrepreneur

Last month, I gave a keynote address to a group of budding young entrepreneurs at Woodbury University. They were competing for the best business plan as part of the CEO forum: Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization.

I shared some of my own story, and some insights about being an entrepreneur that I have learned along the way. The speech resonated with the audience, and I include it here for those that were unable to attend -- hope it continues to inspire.

Keynote address – Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization - Business Plan Competition
Delivered by Judy Smith Asbury
Woodbury University
Burbank, California
April 4, 2009

Thank you Karen. I am really honored to be here tonight. Also, I want to thank Bud Walker and Aida for giving me the background of the CEO group here and helping me prepare.

It is a challenge to say something inspiring or at least interesting, to those who have done so much to study entrepreneurial ventures, as well as those who have achieved great success as entrepreneurs, particularly, Mr. Tom Baron who made this award and this evening possible, Dean Andre Van Niekirk and Dr. David Rosen.

I am here tonight, not as an expert, but as a player on the court. I am an entrepreneur and I enjoy working with entrepreneurs. So, I am going to give you a sort of “field report” and share some of the insights I’ve learned.

I hope these insights will prepare you for the journey you are about to undertake.

Being an entrepreneur is a wonderful journey. My coach – and I’ll speak more about the importance of a coach later – calls it a sacred journey. The reason she calls it sacred is that as an entrepreneur, you must constantly be examining yourself, constantly learning, constantly ready to re-invent your business, as the vehicle for your own self-expression.

In 1984, there was an American Entrepreneurs Association that came up with the following credo:

“I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon-if I can. I seek opportunity-not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

"I want to take the calculated risk, to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

"I refuse to barter incentive for a dole; I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of Utopia.

"I will not trade my freedom for the beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

"It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say:

"This, with God’s help, I have done. All this is what it means to be an Entrepreneur."

An entrepreneur is someone who wants to do it their way, with a conviction that they know the best way/the best product to solve the problem. They can’t hide – their success or failure rests squarely on their shoulders. No one else is to blame.

It takes great heart, great courage and great conviction. It takes arrogance and humility. It takes a commitment to learning – learning about yourself and about what your customer needs and wants --- always ready to adjust and re-create your business. It takes a commitment to marketing: indeed, an e has an intuitive sense of marketing, and the changing desires of customers.

The dictionary defines entrepreneur as a person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Others are great at educating, at managing, at inventing, at leading, at marketing. The entrepreneur is an entrepreneur because he/she thrives on taking the risk, constantly promoting themselves and their organization to the world, and serving their customers.

So, welcome to the journey.

I did not have some grand vision of being an entrepreneur when I started.

I had a need. I needed to work close to home to be nearby my 2 year old daughter, and there was no agency nearby that did the media work that I loved.

I was stymied until one day a colleague asked me, why don’t you go into business yourself? I replied, ‘I know nothing about running a business.’ Her reply, “you’ll learn.”

I did learn. I learned that indeed, just as I could not find an agency that did the work I did, clients could not find one either and soon I had clients in Pasadena that were hungry for my services.

But, since I had not done my business homework, in a few years I burned out by over-servicing and under-charging my clients. I did not trust myself. I thought – maybe I really don’t know what I’m doing. I took my clients and went to work for a “real” PR agency. It was the equivalent of a Woodbury Entrepreneurship class for me.

But, I realized I was not happy. I had a taste of entrepreneurism. And I loved it.

So, I started an agency for real in 1987 – one with a plan. This in fact, is my first insight, which you all already know: do your homework and have a reasonable plan as your road map.

I hired a CPA who was a business manager to help me put the financial backbone of the business plan together. It was amazing to me how that plan came true the first year. It was comforting to have a road map to consult and follow. I realized all my financial projections that first year. And, this was the last real recession in the US – so don’t let bad economic news stop you!

But the plan I had for future years did not emerge. I envisioned that I would continue to grow as a PR agency, with more and more account executives until the firm had accounts in the millions, at which time I would sell to someone and do something else.

In fact, the business changed as I changed.

And that brings me to the second insight I have to share with you: appoint a coach for yourself. This is a person who knows you well, who is completely on your side – but who also will tell you the truth and give you a more objective point of view.

An entrepreneur needs to constantly re-examine him or herself. We get caught in complex mind-sets; we are caught in fear, in mis-trust of our own judgment, in hallucinations of what we think “will” be. We need someone that will tell us the truth, who will hold up a mirror so that we can act based on facts, not a story we made up.

And, one thing I have learned is that no matter what the situation, what the client, the circumstance, the product – ultimately, the issue you need to deal with as an entrepreneur is you. You are the business. You are the soul and vision and passion of the business. And, so you need someone who can help keep you on track and see things as they really are. That is what I call a coach.

On this remarkable journey as an entrepreneur, you are on the fast track for learning to dance with life. The secret to success as an entrepreneur is the ability to quickly respond to opportunity. It is what corporations thirst after; and why small businesses that respond quickly to changing realities can succeed when larger corporations fail.

Third Insight: use your business plan as a guide, but don’t get attached to it as THE WAY IT SHOULD BE.

Our agency has evolved many times. After that first year, things didn’t really go according to plan.

After concentrating only on providing media relations services, I realized that this didn’t completely serve my clients. They needed a more comprehensive approach, and so with my new partner Greg Asbury, we began to offer marketing plans with a variety of communication tools.

We launched into new areas of technology as the Internet and mobile communications grew. In fact we started a company, Mocca, to harness the ability of text messaging (SMS) as a marketing tool.

Our vision of growing profits by hiring more account executives began to wane. We found ourselves more involved in managing people than in doing the creative work we loved. We changed our business model from one based on growth by hiring more people to an agency built around the two of us, hiring people only as we needed to for various client projects.

The evolution of our business also came about as result of serendipity.

I was working with a client who was a float builder. One of his floats was from the Republic of Indonesia. I had studied Asian culture in college, and so had some affinity for themes of these floats. Every year, we were invited to attend the after parade party at the consulate. There we would spend a few minutes with a lovely chairwoman of their float committee, named Ibu. Each year she would thank us, “you have done such a good job representing us, but you must come to my country and see if for yourself.” I thought this was just idle chat until one day my fax line rang and the fax coming thru read, “’good news! Ibu has invited you to come as her guest to Indonesia.”

It was an opportunity I could not pass up. But, I didn’t see a lot of business prospects coming from it either. Greg and I went there, and made such a connection with Ibu, her family and the other committee members that we have been doing business in Indonesia in some way ever since. In fact, one of our businesses, the manufacturing firm, Carolina Precision Manufacturing was founded in partnership with Ibu’s oldest son.

Our boutique-publishing firm, Mitra Publishing came about when we were working with Ibu to publicize her national flower garden in Indonesia. We needed a way to give the garden immediate credibility, and we thought, why not make a book with all the photos we have? That experience led us to found the publishing arm, and we use it from time to time for clients with a special need.

It also was the impetus for Greg to learn graphic design on his new Mac computer – a skill that added greatly to our marketing abilities.

And, one last piece of advice for your journey: Embrace your failures. Every failure opens a door to a new opportunity. Take time to grieve for the lost dream, take time to go over the details and learn what you did to get you in this position. But once that self-examination is done, look for the new opportunity. It is always there.

I guess this is the part I love most about being an entrepreneur. Making lemonade out of lemons. What a feeling of accomplishment occurs when I realize we have transformed a tragedy into a great opportunity.

I wish you all the greatest success. This is the BEST time to start a new business. The status quo is broken in many, many industries. And that means opportunity for those that have vision, passion and conviction that they have a new idea, a better way to make a difference in the world.