Success Stories: Your Entrepreneur Story
We invite you to submit your entrepreneurial story of how you got started. We encourage you to share your journey of ups and downs as it may inspire others to keep on going and not give up on their dreams. Your personal tips and secrets will lend a hand to other entrepreneurs who are on their way to success! Selected stories will be posted on "Your Entrepreneur Story".
We can't wait to hear from you!
We can't wait to hear from you!
| 2007-11-05 12:18:34 |
| Gudmundur Sigurdarson |
| As many other entrepreneurs and startup business owners, I had to learn my lessons the hard way. Being only 21 years old, and having a “know it all” attitude, I started my first brick and mortar business. Needless to say, it did not exactly take off partially because of my attitude and even a bigger part being the lack of knowledge. I did do some things right, in fact I had a great launch, but just like many others within 2 years I was no longer in business. My story is not that different from many other stories that you may hear. What makes my story interesting (at least to me) is what I learned over the next few years. Needless to say after loosing my business, some of my “know it all” attitude deflated and I started seeking out mentors to help me. If there was one thing I knew, it was that I wanted to make this experience come to use. My vision of working for myself and helping others by providing them with jobs had not changed. As you will find out, it only became bigger after my first failure. I am not going to take up much of your time by going into details of the next few years, having to work for others and almost having to file for bankruptcy. I will tell you that what happened over the next few years was an amazing experience and completely changed my life. I was fortunate enough to start working with one of the greatest men that I know, a man that has started, setup and sold over 10 businesses. As far as I know all of them are still thriving today. Working along side him I learned more about business, marketing and building business systems than any school had taught me. Real life experiences of trial and error. The experiences of a true entrepreneur can not be taught in schools. Standing beside them, experiencing the emotional intensity of trial and error, is the still one of the best teachers. Having a chance to listen, read and understand what they did, is a close second. That is why I am a vivid reader, and now writer of books that cover, touch on or deal with these topics. Over the course of the last few years, I kept working on making my vision a reality. I had the chance to work very closely with my former boss that I mentioned before, and several other entrepreneurs. I also had the chance to work with some great consultants in the marketing, sales, franchising and business development industries. The reason I had this chance was because the company I was working for was in franchise development and I was put in charge of that process. During this time I also had the opportunity to setup what would be my 2nd business. This time around, I was able to use many of the things I had learned from people I had gotten work from, learn from and consulted with. This business was an online business. It was a directory for colleges with information about banking for students, common medical issues and general information. The primary income came from advertisements and sponsors. I ended up selling that business for quite a bit of profit. My cost for setting up that business was minimal. In fact it was just the cost of having the site professionally built. Between the income from the site and profit from the sale of it, I was able to use to setup my next business. The next business I setup was a spin-off company from the company I was working for, providing consulting for startups wanting to go online in an effective way. We consulted both individuals and small businesses, with anything from websites to online advertising. Over the course of two years we assisted over a 100 companies launch successfully online, encompassing everything from small brick and mortar to online only businesses. I sold that company after two years, and once again used the income and profits as funding for the next business. I had an opportunity of a lifetime at this point in my life, a chance to move to the USA where I had always wanted to go and do business. The company I had been working for, through the lifetime of my second and third business, was looking for someone in the US to run the pilot project. What they wanted was for someone to basically launch it as an individual business, using only a few thousand dollars to get the business up and running. Since I was willing to make this investment of both time and money, the company made arrangements for me to move. The first thing I needed to do was to learn more about the market in the US. So I decided to take 6 months to do nothing but research on the market I was about to enter into. After that time we launched to first independently run DesignEuropA office. I owned and operated it as a stand alone entity, and ran it without any assistance from the corporate office. Within 6 months of launch we were generating revenue of over $15,000 with only me and one other person. As the business evolved it become less and less dependant on me, allowing for me to open up another business. Over the last few years I had been adding to my education, getting my certification as a business and executive coach. I had been outsourced from DesignEuropA to do training and business consulting, so I had the experience I needed. Between those things I decided to setup Mindformula, a company that focused on coaching, training along with personal and professional development. I sat down and wrote my first book that was published; in addition I started creating outlines for three other books. After I had set Mindformula up and it was providing me with all the work I wanted it to do, I had got in touch with some great people and saw an opportunity that I felt pulled towards. Currently I am in the process of setting up a company that has expanded from DesignEuropA and Mindformula. Redknight Marketing is my newest baby, a company that combines many of the things I have done before, with what many of the other two companies’ clients had asked if we could do. By using the knowledge of the people I had working for me, and the people I had gotten to know through Mindformula. We setup a marketing and consulting company that works as a marketing department for small businesses. Working with anything from entrepreneurs to larger corporations we provide a turn key solution for anything from brainstorming to full fledge marketing campaigns. The company is still in the startup stages with an expected official launch in 2008. Despite not being officially launched Redknight Marketing already has several clients. The clientele varies from manufacturing companies to authors, from consumer to b2b sales. Currently I am more excited about this business than I have been about any of my other start ups. Simply because it allows me to use all of the knowledge and expertise I have accumulated over the last 10 years. In addition it allows for me to have all of my businesses work together, connecting them with other experts I have worked with as an executive coach. As part of the startup for Redknight Marketing I sat down with several of my consultants, employees and clients. Where we confronted some of the problems startup businesses run into, and put together a book called “Be the 10 that make the 90”. We allowed several of our clients to read the book to get feedback, and received amazing responses. We have already pre-sold over 500 e-book copies and 1000 hardcopies. The publishing date is set for December 20th for the e-book and March 1st for the hard copy. (If you would like to pre-order your e-book you can find it on 10make90.com). Needless to say this is not the only project I am working on, I am currently working on setting up two other businesses that are scheduled to launch in 2008 and 2009. I have to admit that I am also considering selling the website design company, and use that to fund these other projects. Preparations have already started for one of them and the other is still on the drawing table. Little did I know that my vision would lead me to where I am today, after my first business went under there where many times where I doubted if entrepreneurship was something for me. One of the most valuable things I learned about business during those years was to keep my spirit and to never loose my vision, which has brought me more success than I dared hope for. To everyone that has been or possibly is in the shoes I wore a few years ago, know that as long as you are determined in becoming successful, you will be successful. All you have to do is be willing to learn. The more teachers, mentors or consultant you can work with the more you will learn. The more you are willing to seek out the information, willing to learn and take the time needed to acquire basic information, the bigger your success will be. There are many things you can learn from books, from seminars and from talking to people that are very useful and increase the chances of success. Even the best information in the world can not give you a step by step guide to guarantee success. Only your experience can do that, the information just makes you better equipped to deal with all the things you are going to be faced with. The more you know the more effective you will become, the more effective you become the easier it is to get your business to the level you want it be. I would like to take this chance as well to thank the people that invest their time in teaching others. This includes everyone from my former boss who was and always will be one of my mentors. To people like Donald Trump, Anthony Robbins, Robert Kioysaki, Doppelit and several others that are willing to spend their time helping others reach the goals and the kind of success most only dream about. Sincerely, Gudmundur Sigurdarson |
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